


Outta My Head (When You’re Not Around)

by ShadowsLament



Series: Will You Haunt Me (To Set Us Both Free) [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, Post-Defenders, post-Punisher s1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:48:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: Frank wants the Devil on his side in a war against Jigsaw's operation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken obvious liberties with some of the locations, maybe a couple of other things, too. I hope you enjoy reading it!

David gaped at Frank. “You’re going where?”

“You heard me.”

“Technically, that is true,” David said, completing a circuit from desktop to laptop to the food spread out across the kitchen counter, “but what I heard sounded like the name of a convent or--”

“That’s right.”

David flicked back that robe he wore like a security blanket. All the hours they’d put in, he’d let the beard and hair grow long, kept it as untidy as it had been in the basement. The circles that rimmed both eyes, those weren’t as dark. Frank had looked in a mirror and couldn’t say the same.

“Are you even listening?”

Frank glanced up once the bag’s zipper slid home. “You think I’m gonna fucking start that shit now?”

That bought him a snort like something out of a pigsty. “You haven’t become reacquainted with God, have you?”

“God?” Frank shook his head. “No.”

“Interesting.” David tugged on a few strands silvering his beard, a hundred yard stare perched on Frank’s shoulder. “Not the big guy, okay. That leaves...An angel?” His sharpening focus shifted to the bridge of Frank’s nose. “One of the smiters, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Saint?”

“No.”

“A nun?”

“What? No.” Frank drummed his fingers on the table to watch David’s jaw tighten, his teeth clench. One day Frank would get around to asking why the sound drove him batshit. Maybe. “God, angels, all that shit, you think that’s what’s gonna help us get this done? Nah,” Frank said. “That’s barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

“Okay.” David couldn’t leave the word alone, had to drag out the vowels. “I’m at a loss here, Frank. Shit’s going down every night, we’re barely keeping up, and you’re--”

“Gonna find a Devil.”

The bag hoisted up to his shoulder, Frank strode through the living room. David followed, narrowly avoiding the sofa’s blunt corner in his attempt to keep up. The man’s open, rounded mouth was reflected widescreen, the narrow pinch of his brow like an antenna that lost signal.

“Satan,” David said, finally locating his vocal chords, “you two are on speaking terms now?”

“That comes as a shock, does it?”

“Yes.” 

What was Frank supposed to do with that stubborn streak of honest belief in Frank? In who he was, or could be, or some load like that. From another smart man who should know better. _Fine_. He stopped with his hand on the van’s door handle. _All right_.

“You heard of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

“Rings a bell,” David hedged, “keep going.”

“We need him.” Frank thought it would’ve been harder to admit, but some rare truths really were that simple. “I’ve seen a lot of fighters, right, in my time, and he’s fucking close to unmatched.”

“Did you try--”

“Yeah, I did,” Frank said, with the memory, vivid and sharp, riding his mind. How many times had he closed his eyes and seen Red’s lips move to snarl, words like blood spit from that mouth? Seen the man stand up over and again, hands curled to fists, and fuck the consequences? There was no quit in him. Regardless of whatever else they disagreed on, regardless of the fact that he knew that list ticked on like time, Frank wouldn’t deny the respect Red’s single-fucking-minded determination demanded. “Operative word bein’ try.”

“All right,” David made a production of mulling that over, rounding out the ridiculous act with a series of slight nods, an exaggerated swallow, “but--”

“Look, we gonna stand here all night, or--”

“Fine.” David backed up a step. “Fine. Go get your Devil.”

“Ain’t mine,” Frank muttered, yanking the door open. The duffel tossed onto the passenger’s seat, he swung up into his own. “Keep an eye out and the stupid shit you get up to when I’m not around to a minimum.”

“You got it.” The door shut. David’s face centered in the frame of the rolled-down window. “There’s more to that story. Know how I know?”

Frank propped both forearms on the steering wheel. Turned his head. Cocked an eyebrow.

“You make these pornographic sounds in your sleep sometimes. Incredibly filthy stuff, for the most part,” David said, in this tone that was a kissing cousin to glee. “Give Red my best.” 

David was lucky, damn lucky, Frank didn’t break the hand he waved when he moved back to the curb, his grin a splinter searching for a soft spot, some tender, compromised bit of Frank’s skin to sink beneath. Lieberman swore, now that he had his family back, he wouldn’t go looking for trouble, but then he went and did something stupid--used Red as a taunt, in good humor or not--and no one’d blame Frank for being the one to deliver it and then some.

“Uh huh,” Frank said, a little harder than he should’ve been on the key, ramming it in to start the ignition, “I’ll be sure to do that.”

He flattened his foot on the gas pedal, sparing a glance at the wing mirror. Gratification was a small rock kicked up by the back left tire slapping at David’s face, knocking the smirk clean off. Cheap shots. Yeah, Frank could take ‘em too.

A mile and a half out his phone rang. He answered, “I’m thinkin’ maybe you’re the one with the hard-on for me,” and switched to speaker.

A pause punctuated by light inhales preceded a sweet, tentative voice. “Frank?”

“Shit,” Frank softly swore, snatching up the phone. His thumb heavy on the screen before he brought it to his ear. “Yeah, Leo. You good?”

“I...Dad said you might be gone for a few days, and I wanted to say--But I shouldn’t have called--”

“Naw, naw, Leo,” Frank said. “You can call. You can always call, okay?”

“Okay,” she echoed, and Frank hoped the smile he heard was actually on her face. It did him some kind of good to think he had a single thing to do with putting it there. “I hope you find your boyfriend.”

Another man would’ve choked on his own spit, maybe, or swerved minutely into the oncoming lane. Frank just bit back what was in his head to say--wrong person, wrong time--and settled on, “It’s not really like that.”

“I don’t care, you know.” The way Leo rushed the words, Frank was kinda expecting the ones that came out of her mouth in their wake. “That he’s a guy, I mean. It doesn’t matter. Not to me.”

“It would surprise the fu--heck outta me if it did. But that’s not--”

“Can I meet him?” she asked. “I bet, if you like him, he must be hot. And smart. Really smart.”

Frank licked his lips, looked out the window at leaves dressed in green, edged in red and yellow, as another tree-lined mile sped by. He’d fix it later, he resolved, set her straight when he could come up with an explanation stripped of his actual intentions, what he hoped Red would help him accomplish. “He’s, uh...smarter than me, you know?”

“You’re smart,” she said, quickly and decisively, like Frank was hers to defend. But that didn’t mean she was about to let up on him, no, sir. “So is he hot?”

“Well, now,” Frank rumbled, sighting the sun as it came down, washed the scope of his world in soft, spectacular light, “that’s a matter of preference. Of taste.”

“But _you_ think he is, right?”

Frank had only ever seen so much of Red’s face clearly. Too many shadows. The mask. Blood a thick, distorting makeup he’d had a hand in applying more than once. The time they’d spent in the light, Frank’d been too far in his head to pay attention. What he had to go on was the mouth his thoughts honed in on too often, the jaw studded with dark stubble. The sound of Red’s voice, like fingers drawn down Frank’s stomach. The body, now that was something Frank didn’t need to see out of the suit to know it was the stuff wet dreams were made of, not when Red moved the way he did. Fought the way he did, with grace and fluidity and shit, like he was Gene Kelly showin’ up Sinatra in technicolor.

“Yeah,” Frank said, finally, shifting on the seat. “He’s hot. Probably out of my league, if you want the truth.”

Leo sighed--dreamily, if he was inclined to use the word--and if that wasn’t the sweetest fucking sound Frank had heard in a long while--“What’s his name?”

The leather wrapped around the steering wheel creaked. Frank eased up a bit, and rasped, “It’s...I call him Red.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Why?”

“‘Cause he was wearing that color,” Frank said, checking the speedometer, his rearview, “the day we met.”

“Could I--” She must’ve shuffled the phone over to her shoulder, the speaker momentarily crackling with a burst like static. David’s voice lobbed into Leo’s room, muted by the fabric of her shirt. The pair exchanged a few, quick words, then Leo was back, said, “Dad wants to talk to you,” in a way that telegraphed her displeasure over the interruption.

“Sure. Thanks for the call, Leo,” Frank said, leaning hard on sincerity. “I’ll be by, soon as I can.”

“And you’ll bring Red,” she said, with a certainty only kids and cons could unequivocally get behind. “Bye, Frank.”

“Later, kiddo.”

The phone was handed off and, for once, Dave’s greeting was appropriately wary. “I didn’t know she was going to--”

“You’re a prick, you know that, Lieberman. My boyfriend?” Frank bit out, “I don’t like lyin’ to kids.”

“I might have overheard a little towards the end.” David hesitated. “Are you certain you did?” 

“What the fuck does that mean? Huh?” Frank frowned, ignored the twinge from a shallow gash across his cheekbone. The ones like paper cuts always were the worst. “You think you know somethin’, spit it out.”

David cleared his throat. “Nothing much to report on,” he said, wisely straying from the subject. “There was something about Wallabout, a transfer, possibly. They’re keeping the chatter brief, vague.”

“You catch the name again?”

“Yeah.”

Frank said, “Keep listening, then,” and ended the call.

The high-mast lights flickered on. Where it gathered to coat the pavement, a fine mist shone like an oil slick. There’d been rain in the forecast, he’d heard that on the news before Sarah’d switched channels. Might’ve been why the highway was uninterrupted, headlights few and far between on either side. If his intel was good and Murdock-- _Matt_ \--really was were Frank’s source put him at, he’d be there in a matter of hours.

Enough time to find the words that might have a shot in hell at putting Red by his side.

Sure as shit, Red’s absence from the Kitchen had been noted quick enough, word spreading like fire licking a gas line. The place had been scum-infested before, but without the Devil there--stalking rooftops, scouting alleys and unlit streets--every lowlife and bottom feeder in the city took it as an invitation to crawl out of the sewers. 

If that had been the worst of it, Frank would’ve simply enlarged his arsenal, stockpiled ammo, got his hands on a few more shipments of grenades. Longer hours didn’t bother him much. He could get by on less sleep, no problem.

But there was something else, someone new had moved in, was shuffling things around. Gambling. Drugs. Trafficking and prostitution. Mercenaries stacked like a rigged deck. Not a damn thing off limits. And the hand this boss had played to that point was all arrogant finesse, flashy. Like he was after attention. The kind that left a scent for Frank to follow. The shape of the trap wasn’t obvious, not yet, no, but Frank figured it was bein’ designed for the Punisher alone. 

Red was a relentless, highly-skilled wrench. Brutal, even, when he let go. Stopped thinking. And who was gonna see the Devil comin’ before it was too late, damage done?

“Fuck if I did.”

Slouching some, stretching his unoccupied leg the best he could, Frank went over the route he’d mapped out. He flicked on the wipers, not bothered in the least by the rain that sliced through the window where it was cracked open, dampening the hood and sleeve of his sweatshirt. The wet and the wind dropped the interior temp by a degree or two, not the worst thing to have happen during a long haul.

Attention pinned to the road, he picked off exits as the sky shed shades of blue, dark to light.

When his eyes felt heavier than they should it was enough to punch the radio’s dial, turn up the volume. He didn’t give a shit that it was tuned to eighties pop. The music pulled out a scene from the day before, when Leo sat cross-legged in the passenger’s seat, watching as he worked on the gauges. She’d been intent on giving him every single small detail of the video game she was into. The songs she’d discovered that way. He wasn’t going to stop her when she hit up the radio, flipped through the stations. The squeal she’d let out when a familiar melody filled the van, Frank wasn’t going to forget that delighted noise, not anytime soon, and then she went and sang her heart out. In four minutes flat Frank found himself locked down with a new appreciation for Hall and fucking Oates.

Matt was just gonna have to suck it up and deal with a musically induced toothache for the length of the ride back.

Accelerating when his exit came up, Frank hit the blinker, fixed to the soundtrack of Leo’s humming, and crossed lanes. Thick foliage ran parallel to the main road bisecting the town, broken here and there by long driveways, brick homes sprawled out lengthwise and propped up in front by tall white columns. He passed more than one church, stained glass saints shining beneath the sun, pitched steeples rising above stone.

Frank ducked his head to look out the passenger window at street signs sporting small American flags. Green wreaths. Red ribbons. An honest-to-God Radio Flyer, fully restored, idled by a curb, weighed down by a compact hay bale. “What, no lemonade stand?”

About the only thing that didn’t unduly disturb him about the Rockwellian corner of the world he was willingly wading into were all the dogs pelting across front lawns. 

He crested a steep hill to find the convent directly ahead. Surrounded by a wide field dotted with bright flowers, a few saplings, the building was three stories of pale yellow clapboards and glass. A lot of glass, factoring in the attached conservatory. Through the forest of potted ferns housed inside, Frank took a head count: three women--two in full habits, the third in a gray cardigan and slim skirt--and a man collared in white. The front door opened for a young woman on crutches, bathrobe open over a pair of pajamas. She stood there for a long minute, head tipped back, eyes tracking drifting clouds.

Backing off a bit, Frank parked the van.

Word was Red had a high-rise come down on his back. Stubborn bastard must’ve told Death to fuck off, because he was somewhere in there, supposedly, and very much alive. Anything beyond the fact of his breathing, Frank had asked, received a one-shouldered shrug for the trouble. He didn’t much like the way his pulse jerked harder than a nasty recoil when he thought of Red incapacitated in some way, brought low by anything. It wasn’t right. Wasn’t the way it should ever go.

Frank opened the door and got out. Hands tucked into shallow pockets, he skirted the property, heading for the back of the building. 

An expansive terrace, mismatched chairs facing a lawn that rolled gently down to a pond crowded with mallards. A dark-haired man sat at the top of several steps put in place to separate concrete from grass. His back to Frank, a massive, black-furred dog leaned heavily against his side.

“It’s customary to bring flowers, Frank.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank’s mouth curled up at one corner, “you don’t exactly look sick to me, Red.”

A sigh, slight enough to go unnoticed by most, but it made the behemoth beside him lick a wet stripe up Matt’s neck. To his credit, he didn’t make a move to wipe away the residue. “I recently had a very long day, so if this is a business call--”

“Not like--I’m not gonna--It’s not like that,” Frank said, lamely, and for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Matt ran a steady hand down the dog’s back, appearing to accept the words as truth. “Things must have really gone to shit, then, if you’re here.”

“That a guess?” Frank asked, eliminating some of the distance he’d maintained. “Or do you know something ‘bout what’s going down?”

“How could I?”

“I don’t know.” Frank stopped walking when Matt’s back straightened, sharp and stiff, painstakingly alert. “Maybe the same way you knew it was me standin’ here without havin’ to turn around.”

“How did you find this place?”

“You made a call.”

“Did I?”

“Jones didn’t give you up,” Frank said, because loyalty damn well mattered, and he wasn’t about to take hers away from Red, “but there are a lot of vets livin’ on the streets. Making sure your ears are open and to the ground isn’t a habit you break.”

Matt laughed, light as the breeze. “I know.” He scratched behind the dog’s ears. “This is Hugo, by the way.”

Frank eased down to his haunches, but the dog didn’t budge. Turned his head to get a better look at the stranger, sure, but he was planted exactly where he wanted to be. “Real good to meet you, Hugo.” Frank looked at Matt’s nape, the slice of skin near the hairline that was already hardening to scar. “Not that the back of your head isn’t nice, Red, but anytime you want to turn around, that’d suit me fine.”

“Nice?” Pushing up to stand when Matt did, Frank watched Hugo nudge his head under Matt’s hand, huffing contentedly, Frank would guess, when long fingers wove through the abundance of fur there. “Flattery, it appears, will get you everywhere.” 

Matt turned and smiled, for real. It was like being back on the road when the sun showed up, bright enough to daze, to stun the senses. Frank wondered briefly, absently, if it was even possible to adjust to the curve of those lips. _For Christ’s sake_ , he thought. _Get a fucking grip, Castle_.

Frank stepped closer. Hugo growled, softly. “Tell your guard dog to stand down, will you?”

“He doesn’t consider you a serious threat, if it helps.”

“Doesn’t--Excuse me?”

“He’s not trying to offend your sensibilities, Frank, it’s just the way it is,” Matt said, smiling still. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s not above using your mile-wide soft spot for dogs to his advantage if you try anything.”

“Just what I need,” Frank muttered, “another know-it-all. He comin’ with us?”

“I would probably have to agree to go first.” Matt tipped his head. “Tell me.”

“Not here.”

“In that case,” Matt walked away, Hugo sticking close, “I’m sorry you came out this way for--”

“There’s a new player in town, calls himself Jigsaw,” Frank bit out, staring hard at Matt’s back when he paused, a foot to spare between him and the set of back doors. “He’s cozied up to a lot of the heavy-hitters, Fisk included. You want more than that, come with me.”

“Do you know what happened? Why I’m here?”

“Might’ve heard something about a building collapse.”

Matt nodded. “That’s right. So what makes you think I’m in any shape to fight? That I wouldn’t be a liability?”

“Fuck that,” Frank snarled. “You’re standing, aren’t you?” He didn’t have to glance down. “Your hand’s been a fucking fist since Fisk’s name came into it.” 

“So what?”

“I am asking for your goddamned help, that’s what.” 

“What’s changed? You’ve had a lot to say about my methods--”

“We’re wasting time--”

“Then go,” Matt snapped. “Handle it.”

Frank drew in a deep draft of air carrying a scent similar to a stocked greenhouse. So many flowers and plants mixed up, there wasn’t one distinguishable from the rest. “I am _not_ leavin’ you here. Work with me or don’t, your place is back in the city, not this--”

“Neverland?”

“Sure,” Frank agreed, the tightness lashing his chest smoothing out some, “if there’s a crocodile, maybe a couple of malicious mermaids down in that pond.”

After a heavy beat, Matt decided, “I’ll go with you. And I’ll listen. That’s the only guarantee you’re getting.”

“Fair enough.”

“There are things I’ll need to get from the room I was using.”

“Right behind you, Red.”

“I’m not going to jump out a window.”

“Didn’t cross my mind,” Frank said, edged out by the dog, left to bring up the rear. He kept his head down as they took the stairs, pointlessly for all the notice the sister they passed on the second floor landing had taken of the three of them. “Friendly place.”

Matt shrugged. “I wasn’t here for the company.”

The cross on the wall outside the room Matt mentioned was crooked. He shifted it back to straight before opening the door, moving directly to the small desk beneath an open window robed in restless white gauze curtains. Lined up next to a worn bible were his glasses, the cane he more often than not carried folded up in his hand. Both went into a pocket. 

“That all?”

“I also wasn’t here on vacation. But there’s a sweatshirt in the closet behind you,” Matt said, “if you wouldn’t mind?”

Frank went and got it, handing it over for Matt to tug on. He looked down at the dog sitting on Matt’s feet. “What about him?”

“If he follows,” Matt said, pulling the zipper up to his throat, “I guess he’ll have made the decision for us.”

They exited through the front door. No fuss. Not a word spared for Matt’s leaving. It wasn’t a bad idea, this place, for anyone who might have reason to steer clear of a hospital. 

Frank led Matt--and Hugo, cause that dog was breathing on Matt’s heels--down the driveway until it turned to loose gravel, cutting over to a cul-de-sac of dense bushes. The van being a piece of shit, it stood out.

“Made up your mind, huh?” Frank swung open the back doors for Hugo. Soon as the dog jumped in, he ambled towards the front, where Matt was getting settled in the passenger seat. “Yeah, that’s a good boy.”

“You’re going to have to stop for gas,” Matt told him. “Sooner rather than later.”

“Not in this town.” The ignition turned over. The song that filled the van as Frank backed up was measured in outsized cheer, saccharine sweet. “Get used to it.”

The angle of Matt’s eyebrow was as good as a smirk. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Keep it that way.”

“I forgot how pleasant you are to be around.”

Frank glanced over, confirmed that Matt’s expression was neutral, same as his voice had been. 

He’d made the decision to track down Red, whatever he had to do. And he’d accepted what that meant: There was trust there, on his side. Nothing begrudging about it, either. So if the objective was to convince Matt to throw his weight in the ring with them, some transparency was in order. Night after night, until it was done, they’d be out there. Matt was too smart, too aware of every damn thing, to not realize that someone besides Frank was involved. 

“While back, this guy,” Frank said, thumb thumping the steering wheel, “got buried in some of the same shit that stuck to me. He had intel I wanted. I was in a position to help him get back what he needed. It just kinda...worked out, you know, and his hacking skills are no joke.”

“I take it he’s still around.”

“Yeah, he is.” Frank breathed deep. Let it out. “He has a family. Wife, two kids.”

Matt’s silence had a voice, that was something Frank had noticed about Red, straight off. The things he said in that cemetery, he would’ve held it all back if not for that silence, the way it wouldn’t stop mouthing off about Red’s willingness to bear a few more burdens. Didn’t matter that they weren’t his own.

“His girl’s the older of the two. She’s something else, man,” Frank said, smiling. “Whip smart, and funny. Resourceful. Brave enough to scare the shit out of me.”

“And the reason we’re listening to the alleged best of the eighties?”

“You got it. She, ah...”

Matt’s head cocked to the side. “What?”

“She wants to meet you.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Matt said, and he meant it. “What else?”

There was no point holdin’ it back. Frank was plannin’ on buying Hugo a bone or something, soon as he stopped for that gas Matt was right in pointing out they needed, and the way the dog would gnaw on it was inline with what Matt would do if Frank dodged the question.

“David’s a pain in my ass,” Frank pointed out, “you two have that in common.” He didn’t miss the few, distracting lines fanning out around Matt’s eyes, or the huffed laugh. “Snicker all you want, Red, it’s still a fact.” Rolling a shoulder to shrug off the tripwire of tension that ran down to the hand he had on the wheel, Frank admitted, “Before I took off on this little road trip, he put it in her head that I was going to find my boyfriend.”

“That’s not a bad cover, actually,” Matt said, reasonably, latching on to the angle in fewer than a handful of seconds, “assuming you’re keeping them out of it as much as possible.”

“The kids, yeah. Absolutely.” Frank was firm on that. “Sarah’s his wife, and she’d skin us both alive if we kept her completely in the dark. She was good with me enlisting reinforcements. If David said anything to contradict that, we’ll find out soon enough.”

“But you played along,” Matt said, “with the daughter.”

“Leo. You wanna burst her bubble, go right ahead.” Frank switched lanes, sped past an eighteen-wheeler. “I was gonna do it at some point.”

“No, it’s better this way. For now.” Reaching down to give Hugo’s head a rub, Matt said, “There’s a gas station off the next exit.”

It wasn’t on the sign with the fast food franchises and motel. 

Without question, Frank took the exit, following the long curve of the road until it dumped them out in front of a Cumberland with seven working pumps. 

“Frank,” Matt quietly called, after Frank got a foot on the ground, “I’ll pay you back if you--”

“Not necessary.” Frank fished out his wallet as Hugo pressed forward, his snout coming to rest on Matt’s shoulder. “Think he’s picky?”

“Not in the slightest.” 

Matt nuzzled the dog, his eyes closed, and Frank said, “Okay,” but another minute lapsed before he remembered he was supposed to be in the convenience store paying for gas.

Walking down the stacked aisles, he grabbed a few things at random, enough to offer Matt a choice of stuff to eat, and stopped when he came across the selection of dog food, toys, leashes that would likely snap if Hugo ever decided to pick up the pace. The bully sticks were pathetic, too short and thin for a dog of Hugo’s size, but Frank pulled out the bulkiest of the bunch, took it and a small bag of high protein food to the counter with the rest. 

As the clerk went through the motions of the transaction, Frank added bottles of spring water, a pack of gum, because he hadn’t thought there was a reason to give a shit about carrying a brush, paste. “Forty,” he said, tossing down the cash, “pump three.” 

Once the bags were handed off through the window, Frank filled the tank. He heard rustling, a soft chuckle, and a grunt that Frank took to mean Hugo was satisfied.

“Thank you,” Matt said, as Frank pulled away from the pump. “It’ll take some time still, but you’re winning him over.”

“What about you?” Frank asked, and fuck him if he knew where the words, the tone, came from.

Whatever Matt’s interpretation of the question might’ve been, he answered with, “I’m still waiting on those implied details. I need to know what we’d be up against. What you have in mind to do about it.”

“David should be there for that,” Frank said, grateful for the familiar rope Matt tossed his way. “Unless that’s a problem?”

“I expected as much.”

“You would.”

Matt hummed, amused by his half-hearted derision, if Frank was any judge, and twisted a bottle cap to break the seal. Hugo crowded the middle, tongue lapping at the mouth of the bottle, spraying fat drops of cool water over Matt’s hand, Frank’s thigh, across the dash. 

“It’s all good,” Frank said, when Matt moved to use his sleeve to absorb the worst of it. “Dogs do what they do, no point worryin’ about it. This van’s got no real business being outside a junk yard anyway.”

Him bein’ who he was, Matt kept at it until all that remained of the splatter were the dark spots on Frank’s jeans. Those he left untouched. Must’ve figured the air could finish drying them. Shifting towards center, Frank widened the gap between his legs, but, no, Matt’s Boy Scout tendencies extended only so far.

“...is happening when?”

Frank’s eyes, rapidly focusing, darted over from the road to Matt’s face. “What was that?”

Maybe the hesitation before Matt spoke had something of its own to say, but Frank was busy working on the why of Matt’s downturned mouth, the confusion creasing his brow.

“I asked when the meet and greet was going to happen.”

“Sure, that’s...Did you want to change? Or...or...anything? Maybe get the dog settled somewhere.”

“Should I change? Is this the Frank Castle version of meeting the parents?”

Imperceptible as the movement was, Matt knew when Frank’s fingers twitched against the wheel. “I shouldn’t have--”

“It’s kinda like that,” Frank interrupted, to save Matt the breath behind an unwarranted and unwanted apology. “Mostly I was assumin’ those clothes you got on aren’t yours. You keep tugging at the shirt ‘cause it’s too tight, maybe pressin’ on the damage leftover from your round with the skyscraper. Couldn’t help but notice the pants are showin’ more ankle than Catholic modesty allows, and those shoes,” he shook his head, “no way those are yours.”

Matt’s laugh was a rich sound. Warm. Frank stopped himself from turning the radio off to listen to it without the background synth.

“That is both impressive and an offer I’ll take you up on. Drop me--”

“I’m goin’ with you,” Frank said, “wherever it is you’ve decided to go.”

“That may not be the best idea.”

“Tough shit.”

Matt went quiet at that, and kept his mouth shut for more miles than Frank would’ve imagined possible. He picked at the food Frank bought, fed Hugo some of his, by all appearances more than content to hold his hand out as long as it took the dog to eat his fill. After Hugo smacked the bully stick against his hand, Matt went ahead with a protracted game of tug-of-war.

“Jessica assures me I still have an apartment to go back to.”

“Okay.”

“I trust you,” he said, “you trust me.”

“You think I would’ve told you about David, his family, if I didn’t?”

With no response forthcoming, Frank cut a look at Matt. There was no taking apart his inscrutable expression, not if Frank wanted to keep the van on the road. Avoid a crash.

“You could’ve left my injured ass for whatever vulture was circling at the time, Red. More than once. You didn’t. Forget how the trial went, ‘cause that came down to me, my actions. I’m not so thick I didn’t catch on that you would’ve done all you could to get me out of the system. Knowing what I’ve done, you were still determined to make the attempt.”

“Foggy and Karen had--”

“They did their part,” Frank said. “You’re the one I want at my back.”

“Pull over at the next rest stop.”

Frank blinked. “What? Why?”

“Dogs do what they do,” Matt said, dropping his voice so it scraped, a finer grit than Frank’s own, and fuck no, Frank did not shiver or tremble or anything like that shit at the sound. That goddamned conversation with Leo was just fucking with his head. _Had to be_. “Remember?”

“You coulda just said the dog needs to take a piss, you know that?” 

Matt grinned. “Hugo’s too young to overhear that kind of crass language.”

“He better adjust fast.”

“Still haven’t agreed to anything.”

Frank grunted, merging onto the off ramp. There weren’t many spots open; they’d have to take what they could get, walk the distance to the patch of grass beyond the restrooms and vending machines. Matt was out of the van and around the back, opening the doors, in half the time it would take to unbuckle a seat belt.

“Liability, my ass.”

Unfolding the cane, Matt tapped the pavement in Hugo’s easy-going wake. Frank pushed off the curb to follow, flicking a balled-up gum wrapper in the trash. Closely watching three young women waiting to use the facilities. Eager eyes clung to Matt’s ass, and if the heat beneath their skin was indicative of what they had in mind, any one of them might’ve given up their spot to pursue the man. Offer a hand with the dog, or a quick fuck in the men’s room’s empty stall.

He paused near one in particular, a bright blonde wearing deep red lipstick. “Taken.” He pointed in Matt’s direction, in Hugo’s. “Both of ‘em.”

The girl perused him, head to boot, through gold-tipped lashes. “I’d share.”

Frank leaned in. “If you knew what he felt like,” he murmured, “you wouldn’t.”

He heard Matt choke, then cough. Hastily call for Hugo. The dog loped over from the sparse tree line, catching Matt in a tidy circle. Maneuvering out of the way, the cane swinging side to side but inches off the ground, Matt hustled back. 

“We good to go, sunshine?” 

“We should, yes. Now.” Without stopping, Matt called over his shoulder, “I hope he hasn’t bothered you, miss.”

Pushed too far off her stride, she let that go without acknowledgment. 

“What’s with you?” Frank asked, once the tires were eating highway. 

Matt’s jaw loosened by degrees. “Nothing.” Turned to the window, he said, “We’re nearly there.”

“I’m gonna need an address.”

Matt rattled it off and pressed his head back, shutting his eyes. 

Tempting as it was to turn up the radio, Frank left it alone. Matt hadn’t complained, but it was probably too loud already in the small, enclosed space. And the song sucked, worse than some of the others. Grip tight on the wheel, Frank navigated the congested traffic of the city as man and dog ignored him. Fit the van down a narrow alley near Matt’s place, parked.

“What’d I do to deserve the silent treatment?”

“You could’ve told me we were already playing, Frank,” Matt said, and took off, using the fur at the back of Hugo’s neck like it was a collar to keep him close. As if that dog would ever leave Matt, given the choice. “That’s all.”

“What--” Frank didn’t feel like hearing Matt’s answer muffled by what passed for the bedroom door, opting instead to survey the open arms of the empty walls, the cracks webbed across the ceiling, the furniture left cold by Matt’s absence. It wasn’t a home, not as Frank would’ve defined the word, before his turned to ash. Like the Lieberman’s still would, if anybody had call to ask. The apartment was shelter; a place to store that red suit, the horns, not memories. Ones that weren’t finger-painted in blood and bruises.

Removed to the corner window, Frank looked out at the billboard biding its time till dark. When he got sick of the limited view he sat heavily on the couch, put his head back. Listened to the soft sounds and sighs Matt didn’t try to hide, Hugo’s quiet snoring.

****

“There’s coffee here if you want it,” Matt said, before Frank’s eyes opened, before the room took concrete shape. “It was only an hour, but you needed the sleep.”

Frank pushed off a thin blanket, found his feet. “Where are my boots?”

“By the door.”

“How’d you--”

“Ninja.”

“Soldier.”

Matt shrugged, pushing a paper cup with a plastic lid across the counter. “Black, but I have sugar.”

“Don’t need any.” Frank glanced away from the light where it touched Matt’s lips, burned red and slick from the coffee. “Is this something you can do?”

Exactly who he was addressing the question to, himself or Matt, Frank would decide after hearing an answer.

“Unless you’re willing to give me more information--”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Pouring the dregs from his cup into the sink, Matt turned on the tap. “We’re as comfortable as we’re probably going to get around each other. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said, but it wasn’t quite right. A little off the mark. “Leo might expect us to hold hands or something.”

Matt freed the breath he’d been holding. “I can do that.”

“You sure?”

“Are you?”

“Did you want that granola, Red?” Frank deflected, reluctant to identify what stuck to his peripheral, something that might be beyond his reach, period. Or maybe it came down to wanting Matt to balk at the charade, to set terms like an order to be carried out to the letter. A reason to act instead of think. “Pry it out of Hugo’s mouth now, otherwise you’re shit out of luck.”

Frank drained the cup, put it back for Matt to discard. His boots were in the hall as promised. Next to the pair Matt must’ve taken off when he came back from the coffee run. From the dog’s enthusiastic chomping, Frank gathered that Matt let him have the bar without admonishment. “He’s already got you tied around his paw, huh?”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah,” Frank laughed softly. “That ain’t wrong.”

Matt yanked on his laces, formed a double knot. “Shall we go?”

“After you, Red.”

Hugo squeezed through the door as Frank went to shut it, tail swaying. “Didn’t figure you were staying.”

They took the stairs side by side, but it wasn’t until they hit the sidewalk that Frank made up his mind to reach for Matt’s hand. To settle Matt’s fingers inside his bent elbow. “This okay?”

“I’m not a horse you have to break for your touch, Frank,” Matt said, but there was no heat, only dimples in the shade of a five o’clock shadow. “Besides, we’ve been closer than this before.”

“If memory serves, we were kicking the shit outta each other.”

“It counts.”

“That what passes for romance in your world, Murdock?”

“Honestly,” Matt said, climbing in the van, “it does always seem to accompany it.”

Frank let Hugo in, then got behind the wheel to start the relatively short trek back to David’s. “If I never see the inside of this piece of shit van again, let me tell you--”

“It’ll be too soon.” Matt’s smile spread, like so much goddamned sunshine softening a sky blurred by violent clouds. Frank struggled not to see it as his command, forcing his stare back to tow the line splitting the road. “Thank you, Frank. For bringing me back. I hadn’t decided how best to manage that yet.”

“Would’ve gone a lot farther than that convent, Red.”

“Exactly how much of a problem has Jigsaw made himself?”

“Enough.” In the driveway, Frank took a good, long look. “Suit and tie, huh?”

“I’m a lawyer, it’s what they’d expect.”

“How much are you comfortable with me sayin’?”

“You know them,” Matt ruffled Hugo’s ears, “you must trust them, too.”

“With what’s mine, yeah.” The front door opened to reveal David. A sweater in place of the robe. Frank nodded. “Come on, then. Let’s get this part done.”

Hugo sniffed at the lawn and plants edging the walk, bolting to Matt’s side when they reached the door. David’s mouth was open but apparently not working, thrown by the dog or Matt’s glasses and cane or the fact of Frank’s unabraded knuckles and lack of a black eye. Pushing by him, Frank moved into the house and Sarah’s quick embrace, still so like an electric shock that Frank couldn’t manage more than a gentle, awkward pat aimed at the middle of her back.

“Where are the kids?”

“They’ll be down as soon as they realize you’re here,” she said. “With company.”

Frank gestured to Matt. “David, Sarah, this is Matthew Murdock.”

“He’s blind.”

“ _David_.”

“It’s all right, Sarah.” Matt’s grin, crooked as that cross on the wall had been before Matt put his hand on it, brought a light blush to Sarah’s cheeks. “I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it.”

“With what? A rude host who should literally shut his mouth before my fist or Frank’s finds a home in it?”

“Might want to do as she says,” Frank counseled, “if you’d prefer to keep all those teeth.”

A clatter of footsteps on the stairs cut into the mix. “You brought a dog!” 

“That’d be Zach,” Frank told Matt. “Leo, too.”

Straight to Frank, Leo’s arms came up to wrap around his torso. He splayed a hand over her back. “Delivered, as demanded.”

Leo didn’t miss any of the indicators that made her father lose control of his manners. No, but all she did was go for Matt’s hand to shake. “Hi, Red. Is it okay if I call you that, too?” 

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Leo,” Matt said. “And, yes, if you’d like. Or Matt.”

“Why are you wearing a suit?” Zach’s contribution was made from the floor, where he’d hunkered down beside Hugo to comb through the fur at the dog’s throat. “Why isn’t your dog wearing a vest?”

“That’s a good question. A lot of service dogs do, but not all,” Matt answered. “It’s okay if people pet him, and no one’s ever questioned if it’s necessary to have him with me. As for the suit--”

“He’s a lawyer,” Frank pitched in. “Helps the little guy, every chance he gets.”

David bumped Frank’s elbow when Zach started in on Matt about Hugo’s training. “Frank.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I talk to you?” He jerked his head towards the kitchen.

“You good here, Matty?”

His brow might’ve shot for his hairline, but Matt’s only comment was, “Of course.”

Soon as Frank stepped in the kitchen, David rounded on him. 

“Blind,” he hissed. “What the fuck is he really going to do here, Frank? Accidentally trip someone with the cane? I mean, is this a joke? Or have you lost your--”

“Everything you’re saying right now,” Frank leaned against the counter, crossed both arms over his chest, “he can hear, so maybe you need to listen to me. Maybe you need to get your head on straight about this, and if it’ll get you there before you piss me off enough that I make good on Sarah’s threat, I’ll tell you, he can see. Better than you. Probably even better than me.”

David ceased his pacing, turned to Frank with calculation shifting behind the chill in his eyes. “So it’s an act? Why--”

“It ain’t like that either,” Frank said. “Anything more you want to question, ask him.” 

It was a near thing, but David rightly thought twice about pushing his luck. “You could have mentioned it when you were waxing rhapsodic about his fighting skills.”

Frank caught something like a startled laugh, but it was pushed out of mind by Hugo’s bark, deep and rolling. _Huh_. “Hugo’s got a voice.”

“Who?”

“The dog.”

“The dog’s name is Hugo?” David squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I honestly thought this couldn’t get more absurd.”

Leo wandered in with her two cents. “I like that name. It’s cute.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” David said, throwing the dishrag he’d swiped for no reason into the sink. “If you can peel Zach away from Matt, ask if he wouldn’t mind taking a look at something for me. I could use a little free legal advice.”

Leo waited for her father to disappear around the corner, clearly wanting a moment. Frank figured he knew why.

“What’s the verdict, sweetheart?”

“Hot,” she said, eyes alight, “ _definitely_. Mom thinks so, too, I can tell.”

Frank picked over possible replies, all of them inappropriate, so it was just as well that Sarah and Matt decided to join the party before he put his foot in his mouth. “David’s in the basement, said he has something you could take a look at.”

“Sure,” Matt nodded. “Point me in the right direction.”

Later, Frank thought, he could convince himself later that it was for Leo’s benefit, him easing his fingers through Matt’s. Using that grip to pull the man close enough to smell summer on his collar, on his skin. The heat of a mid-afternoon in August was there, too, where their palms pressed flat. “Zach hoggin’ Hugo’s company?”

Matt made a noise of agreement, keeping pace with the cane only to stop using it on the stairs. “Why _didn’t_ you tell him?” 

“Because it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

David was in the center of his hive, flat screens spaced like recesses in honeycomb, wrapped around to almost complete a full circle. Keyboards clogged flat surfaces, wireless mice scattered between cans missing their pop-tops and tinfoil crumpled into tight balls. A few of the latter littered the floor around a small trash can. “How much did you tell him?”

“Not enough,” Matt answered, and Frank saw it, the Devil in the tight curve of that mouth. “Is this going to be a problem?”

David took notice--of the change in posture, the knife-sharp slant of Matt’s head--going by the step back he took, the backs of both legs connecting with the ledge of a desk. The cans on it shuddered together, chimed like church bells before a funeral mass. 

Getting his shit together, David swallowed and shook his head. Remembered. “Not anymore.”

“Now that’s done,” Frank said, “you want to lay it out for him or--”

“Yeah,” David ran a hand through his hair, “yeah. Okay. So--”

Frank listened as David went over locations and affiliations, watched as the man paced, punctuated details with wide hand gestures, with unconscious tugs on the beard. Every now and then David’s gaze strayed to Matt, who stood silent and still, his dark head cocked in contemplation. That was its own kind of threat, Frank knew. And he’d been fucking dumb enough once to ignore it. But not again, no, Frank was counting on every bit of clever, every honed instinct Matt possessed. 

“--ank’s out there nearly every night, but for every man he takes down, Jigsaw spins out two, three, four more. Some of them are new Dogs, some are Fisk’s men, most were only waiting on the highest bidder. That last category, all those guys, they’ve hurt a lot of people,” David concluded. “You could help us stop them, shut down the entire operation, at least that’s what Frank tells me.”

Matt’s head swung in Frank’s direction. “How precise is his word choice?”

“Jigsaw’s the one pulling strings. Him,” Frank said, “I have every intention of putting down.”

“Hey, this is neat. When do you think you might start finishing each other’s sentences?” David asked. 

Matt ignored him, focused sightlessly on Frank. “Are you going to walk into the trap to do it?”

“If I have to.”

“And if I agree to be a part of this,” Matt said, “what do you think will happen then?”

“When the time comes, you’ll try to stop me.”

Matt nodded shortly. “Do you still want--”

“Fuck yes, I do.”

David rubbed a hand over his chest. “I don’t know how you guys feel about me being here at the moment, but my mind’s kinda screaming at me right now? About how I should maybe go make a sandwich or something?” Skittering up the stairs, he called down over his shoulder, “Take your time, though. There’s a cot--Frank you know where the cot is.”

The door shut behind David, quick and loud as a bullet discharged.

After the echo bled out, Frank said, “Forget him.”

“He’s...not what I expected.”

Frank’s lips twitched. “No, I’m sure he isn’t.” 

“And he’s worried that I’ll betray you. Get you killed.”

At some point they’d moved, both of them, circling. Frank could see Matt’s face clearly, and he was paying attention. Was close enough, even, to fit his hand to that jaw, stroke a finger down the pulse beating strong and steady, unrelenting, at Matt’s throat. “I know you won’t, Red. There’s not a doubt about that in my mind.”

“I _will_ stop you.”

“Yeah, you’ll try.”

“Do I need to say it?” Matt asked. “Do you need to hear my answer?”

“Nah,” Frank said, softly, hooking two fingers in one of Matt’s belt loops, “I knew you didn’t have it in you to sit this out.”

Matt licked his lips. “What is this, Frank?”

Frank thought about that, and about a smile like sunshine. Thought about how Matt wasn’t pulling away, wasn’t resisting. Rasped, “Fuck if I know,” and caught Matt’s mouth with a kiss that was unfamiliar but scorching. More, so much more, than Frank had any kind of right to. 

His hold tight, reciprocated, Frank murmured against Matt’s lips, “Guess we’re going to have to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not saying there'll be more--my writing habits are unreliable at best--but there might be more. I'd be lying if I didn't admit to enjoying the hell out of writing this, but anything beyond it will depend on various stuff and things. Mostly how this is received. If you like it, please do let me know. Thank you!
> 
> \--
> 
> The title is taken from Hall & Oates' "Out of Touch," because I had to, there was no other choice. Honestly, I could've picked any one of several other lyrics and they'd have worked. Who would've thought it? :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, _many_ thanks to all of you who left a comment and/or kudos on this fic! The comments were so wonderful I couldn't help but read them repeatedly. Now, here's to hoping I only made a good thing better.

Matt crouched behind a crate shuttering a single sluggish heartbeat. Sand in ceramic. Canvas rolled, scraping against rough string. He tugged a glove off with his teeth, felt along the frame of the box from corner to corner, down to the cement floor. Shot through with nails at regular intervals, he’d need a crowbar to pry it open. 

With three sets of booted footsteps advancing, finding one would have to wait.

“I coulda put him down. Had the shot and everything.”

“Any one of us does that all the thanks we’ll get is a coffin of our own.”

“Said it before, I’ll say it again,” the third voice--arid, heavier than the others--grumbled, “there’s somethin’ off ‘bout the Boss when it comes to Castle. Makes even me uncomfortable.”

The broken piece of cinder block Matt picked up bit into the heel of his palm. His head cocked, he eased his grip, waiting for the rejoinder. All he got were the strained grunts and sharp exhales of heavy lifting as the men transferred boxes to an enclosed utility truck.

“We’re gonna need a forklift for some of these others.”

“No, we ain’t, not unless Boss sends a bigger truck down first.”

“Fisk’s got vehicles in the impound yard. What’s his is ours, right?”

“Vimes, you stay,” the third man instructed, “cram whatever else you can in there.”

The men exited the warehouse, one striking a match just outside the retracted overhead door. Cigarette smoke drifted up to rope a motion sensor spotlight in thin rings of fragrant nicotine. A single, long drag and it was flicked to the ground by the side of a small-engine car that coughed exhaust.

Matt waited for the squelch of tires on wet gravel to smooth out on the street before shifting, coming around to stand beside the crate. 

“Vimes,” Matt called, “catch.”

The jagged slab of concrete took Vimes down with a dull thud. A lucid groan. Matt vaulted the large box between them, fisted the front of Vimes’ coveralls, and used his bare fist to deliver a rapid series of debilitating blows. 

Moving quickly, Matt searched through the warehouse until he found it, a metal cabinet stuffed with supplies. Everything from pencils and rubber band balls to spray paint and tire irons. And on the top shelf, in front of a stack of clipboards with rusted hinges, a crowbar. 

The wood splintered, popped. It was taking too long, but the heartbeat was still there, tempered by unconscious breathing. The slight, older man inside didn’t stir when Matt finally pulled him out, carried him to the guard’s office. Few options presented themselves, so Matt settled for laying him out beneath the desk that was ostensibly there for security monitors, but was covered in coffee cups and crossword puzzles attempted with permanent marker. He put the landline phone on the ground near the guard’s lax hand, swiped a tarp being used as a blanket and brought it out with him. Tossed it over the ruined crate.

Matt dragged Vimes to a corner, left him in shadow when a moving truck pulled into the lot, motor running as the men got out. 

“--just get this done,” Smoker said. “Yo, Vimes, Boss ain’t payin’ you to take a nap.”

“Maybe not, but apparently,” Matt said, stepping into a shallow beam of light, “he _is_ paying you to hurt old men working minimum wage jobs. Medicare doesn’t cover much these days, you know.”

“What the fuck--”

“I’d like a word with your boss,” Matt said, striding towards the two men, their pulses having chosen fight over flight. “Jigsaw, isn’t it?”

“Nobody speaks to him unless spoken to first,” Smoker spat. “Now back the fuck up be--”

Matt grabbed Smoker’s hand before he got to the gun shoved in his waistband, forced the wrist back until bone broke. Withdrawing the weapon, Matt brought the butt down quickly and sharply, opening the man’s cheekbone, the scent of blood blooming bright and metallic. Sharper than the motor oil pooled on the ground where Smoker fell, out cold.

Leveling the gun at the last member of the moving crew, Matt asked, “Why does it make you uncomfortable?”

“What’re--”

“You were talking about Frank Castle, earlier.”

“Was I?” Matt heard the smirk, narrowly restrained himself from shattering the sliver of teeth it must have exposed. “My memory’s pretty shit.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

The gun clattered where Matt tossed it, sliding across the floor. Not an ideal distraction, but he used that moment of diverted attention to kick out the man’s knee. To wind an arm around a neck damp with sweat, tacky where pomade had spread over skin. Matt increased pressure on the hold as blunt nails raked his forearm and steel toed boots frantically scuffed the ground. Panic receded, second by second, replaced by something like peace.

When the man was a limp, heavy weight in his arms, Matt backed off. 

Climbing in the utility truck, moving to the back, he wedged in behind the largest of the crates. Attempted to slouch into a semblance of comfort. Prepared to wait. He’d already missed check-in by several hours. A few more wouldn’t matter if he could pin down Jigsaw’s location. If not exactly, than an approximation. 

Frank would make the same decision, Matt reasoned. And if an empty meet site was a point of offense, David could likely trace Daredevil’s progress to the warehouse at least. 

Matt set his head back, suddenly all too aware of the long string of days trailing behind him, separated by snatches of sleep relegated to plastic and wooden chairs. His arms or a tabletop in place of a pillow. After hearing David out that night in the basement, Matt had resigned himself to inevitable exhaustion, to rarely stepping foot inside his apartment. Though he’d only managed two days without Hugo’s warmth on his feet or draped over his lap before he’d caved and brought the dog to client meetings. To court, after taking on nearly every case that came his way in order to regain ground after Midland.

And to the Liebermans’, where Matt split his attention between David’s recitation of Jigsaw’s latest gains and Frank’s quietly spoken words to Hugo, or Leo. Where he helped Sarah make a ridiculous number of brownies for endless school fundraisers and refused to dwell on a kiss that had not been repeated.

It hadn’t been a lie, either, Matt knew. And Frank did nothing by halves. It had to be--

A pained, put out hiss cut through the relative quiet in the warehouse. Vimes pushed himself up and shuffled over to check on his buddies, smacking one, then the other, rousing both without bothering to help either stand. He collected the gun, hesitating before confirming, “Everything’s here.”

“Except that fucker. I’d’ve--”

“Let’s just get outta here.” Smoker slammed the back doors of the utility truck. “We’ll take what we’ve already loaded, send Venturi back for the rest if he bitches about it.” 

They split off, with Vimes in the borrowed truck, Smoker pushing the utility to a speed that rocked and pitched the boxes and crates. Someone in Jigsaw’s operation was going to open up more than one to find his priceless vases cracked, his unframed art pierced by loose shards. From what David had picked up across various channels, Jigsaw enforced a zero tolerance policy for ineptitude. 

_It’s really not your night, guys._

Sirens split through the center of a clogged intersection. An ambulance, closely followed by a pair of cop cars. Gasoline trickled out of a punctured tank a block over. A woman shouting about explosions, to get back, misfiring a fire extinguisher. 

Restaurants fell in like points on a map: deep friend chicken, tomatoes and basil, sesame, shrimp and soy. The city didn’t rise on concrete and steel but on food, apparently, and so much coffee the bitter scent was thick like molasses. 

Streetlights in the rearview, Smoker pulled down a rutted road leading into a pocket of the city filled with abandoned and condemned buildings. There wasn’t much there beyond rotting wood, broken glass, and chain links. Trash still damp from runoff water and reeking of urine.

And five heartbeats in conversation.

Smoker sighed. “I ain’t explaining this time.”

“Fuck if I’m gonna--”

“Gentlemen.” A formal introduction wasn’t required, not after hearing the absolute command in that voice. Matt measured every beat of Jigsaw’s sniper-steady pulse, a little too like Frank’s for comfort. “Join us.” 

Resignation dulling their steps, seven men followed their boss into a hollowed out building with a charred roof. Someone had taken the time to wall off missing windows with plywood, but left the mold to creep across the floor. 

“Frankie kept himself busy tonight.” 

Matt stilled by the side of the building sheltered from the street. 

“We did as you said to,” one man, younger than the rest, ventured. “Didn’t try all that hard to stop him or--”

Jigsaw clapped the kid on the shoulder. “I saved your life with that order.” Covering a short distance, two heart rates spiked sharply at his approach. “Vimes tells me you had a play date with our new friend tonight. And that you opted to tuck tail over ensuring my shipment was delivered in its entirety.”

“We’ll get the rest, we will, boss, it’s just he...he was--”

“In the warehouse before you arrived.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Smoker said, tension vibrating between the syllables. “Exactly.”

“Yeah? Well I gotta admit, it leaves me to wonder, you know?” Jigsaw gave the men a moment to weigh in, to react to the chum in the water. Matt wondered how quickly they’d learned to leave it alone, what they’d lost to the lesson. “About how he’s known where to--”

“We didn’t say nothin’, not to no one.”

“That’s a weight off my mind, Coop, it really is. And I believe you, because I think this is on Frankie. I think he went recruiting, found himself another brother.” Jigsaw’s tone caused Matt’s jaw to uncomfortably clench, the words infused with something like betrayal, or longing. “One who’s fucking pissing me off, gentlemen, and it’s up to you to do something about it.”

Matt stayed until the scope shifted from the substantial bonus Jigsaw would give the man who delivered the Devil to his door, alive and able to answer questions, to his plans for the bulk of the stolen artwork. There was only so much Matt could do with those details aside from tip off the police over Frank’s objections. David’s, too, probably.

Easing down the narrow path behind the building, Matt wove between dilapidated structures and broken lines of fencing, listening, confident no one noticed or followed. He jogged to the street, found a dimly lit alley, a dumpster, footholds to the roof. Moved quickly as the night warmed into early morning.

On the stairs to his apartment, Matt sighed. Considered his options, what he should say to the man waiting inside, Hugo stretched out beside him to occupy the majority of the short couch. Taking off the helmet, his gloves, Matt tossed them into the open closet where the trunk was kept.

“Where the fuck you been, Matt?”

The dog pressed close against Matt’s leg, offered his wide head for a scratch, for support. “He let you on the couch. That’s--”

“You have any idea how long I stood there, in that park,” Frank said quietly, tightly, “waiting for you to fucking show up, all the--”

“I found Jigsaw.” Matt shrugged. “Sort of.”

Frank breathed in, and out. Banking the anger and adrenaline that quickened the blood running its course to his heart. “Explain.”

“Give me a minute.” Matt stepped around Frank, into his bedroom, took the time he requested and then some to replace the suit with sweats, pausing between articles of clothing to touch Hugo. He dropped a quick kiss on the cool patch of smooth, flat fur above the dog’s nose before returning to the living room. Frank hadn’t moved, and Matt didn’t need to be prompted. “I went to the warehouse David found, ran into Jigsaw’s moving crew.”

“How many?”

“Three, but there were others before them. I found the guard in one of the crates.”

“Alive, I take it.”

Matt crossed to the couch and Frank followed. Kept to the edge of the leather encased cushion when he sat, reluctantly, and likely only because he knew Matt wouldn’t talk while he loomed.

“Yes, and thankfully not much worse for wear. I’ve got a couple of names for David to run,” he said, drawing a hand down Hugo’s back, “but the location isn’t going to do us any good.”

“About that, you wanna tell me how--”

“I hitched a ride in their truck.”

Frank’s shoulders shifted back. “You wh--”

“It was a risk,” Matt allowed, “one that paid off. You would have done the same thing.”

Frank acknowledged that truth with what passed for silence in Matt’s world, eventually sitting back, both hands flat and generally relaxed on his thighs. Some of the anger was still there, buried beneath the questions he wanted to ask, Matt imagined, or snarled up in the thread of concern wrapped tight around that mention of their aborted meet. 

Scratching Hugo behind both ears, Matt waited Frank out, unsurprised when he said, “Finish it.”

“They took the truck out to a part of the city that doesn’t register even as an afterthought. Or it does, possibly, to arsonists and kids looking for the shittiest place possible to drink cheap beer. Four other men were already there, with Jigsaw, who...” Matt hesitated. “I think you’d know him, Frank. If you saw him.”

“All right,” Frank said, evenly, a dangerous kind of calm. “Why?”

“He called you Frankie, for one thing, and it was almost...affectionate, the way he said it. Intimate,” Matt realized. “Jigsaw said he thought you must have recruited me, that you’d found another brother. That sounds like--”

“He said that?” Frank’s stern pulse stuttered. “Another brother?”

“Yeah, and I’m pissing him off. Is it possible--”

“I think--” Frank got to his feet, walked several steps in the direction of the door, turned back. “You should consider walking away, Red. I mean it. You’ve done enough.”

Matt sat up straight. “You do know him.”

“Maybe. I--” Shoving a hand through his hair, Frank said, “Look, this isn’t your fight--”

“You made it my fight when you came to the convent,” Matt snapped, too tired to temper anything, least of all his tone. “And now that I’ve been in it for God knows how many weeks, now that Jigsaw’s put a bounty on my head, you think--”

“What’d you just say?”

“Pay attention when I’m calling out your bullshit excuses, Frank. I’d rather not--”

“Just repeat what you fucking said, will you, for Christ’s sake.”

Hugo growled softly. Matt got up, went to the fridge. He drained a bottle of water before going back for another one, pouring it out into one of Hugo’s bowls. It had been far too long since Matt had a meal that actually--

“Matt,” Frank murmured, standing so near, Matt felt his warmth like countless lit matches in a confessional. “Please?”

More plea than question, Matt couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t deny something strong enough to push Frank away from the wall of his ingrained habits. 

Leaning against the counter, he crossed his arms. “Jigsaw called it a bonus, but whatever the term, it’s a lot of money. Bring me to him, alive, and it’s yours. Interested?” 

“Don’t.” Frank shook his head. “Don’t fucking make that kind of joke.”

Hugo pawed at his empty bowl. While Matt pulled out the bag of dog food, he considered the furious beat of Frank’s heart. “Who is he?” 

Frank cleared his throat. “His name’s Billy.”

“Billy Russo?”

“How’d you know that?”

“David.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, “that sounds about right.”

“It was an outline,” Matt told him, “at best. I know you served together, that you were close. And that he betrayed you at every possible opportunity.”

“I shoulda killed him.”

Matt let that go, preoccupied with another nagging thought. “Whatever else you might think about me, you’ve never doubted my ability--”

Frank huffed. “It’s not simple like--”

“It can be,” Matt insisted. “If you let it.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t do that.”

Swallowing, nodding, Matt nudged Hugo with his knee. “Come on, boy.”

He left the kitchen alcove, snagged his cane off a chair, and--

“Where the fuck are you going?”

“Out.”

Matt slipped on his glasses, lowered his hand to Hugo’s-- 

“I have these dreams, Matt,” Frank said, “about my family. It’s pretty much always one or all three of ‘em getting shot in the head. Over and again, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do except wake up.”

“Frank--”

“That’s not every night anymore, not since you. I got no clue why the ones you’re in are different as night and day, but for all the times we’re tearing through some gang, it’s just as often you and me talking. Or fucking. Having the kinda sex you don’t come away from whole--”

“ _Frank_ \--”

“Because you’ve made that choice,” Frank continued, “to give something of yourself to the person you’re with. To never, fucking ever let go of what is given in return. And I’ve been tryin’ to reconcile all of it, them and you, because people keep on telling me I need to live. I need to get myself a life.”

“You don’t--”

“All the time they’re shoving those best intentions down my throat, I’m there thinking, what do you want me to say? Honestly, what the _fuck_ did they want me to say? I had nothing--”

“Will you let me--”

“You spend your days staking out the truth, Matt, so here’s mine. The only time I breathe the way I used to is when you say my fucking name. That, and when you smile. And the thing is, I don’t even give a shit who gets you to do it, so long as I’m there to see it happen.”

Matt took off the glasses, tossed them aside. “Are you done?”

“Not--”

Matt found Frank’s mouth with his fingertips, the heat of his breath on Matt’s skin a sacrament, the glance of his tongue a prayer Matt had only just begun to recite. Leaning in, Matt took with his lips what his fingers had known first, murmuring soft, insensible words when Frank pulled him closer, held him tighter. When Frank moved deeper into the kiss, like the only shelter he recognized was Matt’s hands, curved around Frank’s ribs, the possibility of a home beating in Matt’s chest. 

It was so close to being too much, perhaps for both of them, and it didn’t seem to matter.

“I’m not going to walk away,” Matt said, the hollow of Frank’s throat absorbing the quiet sound, the intent. “I’m not.”

Frank drew loose circles on Matt’s back, the nape of his neck. “I know.”

“You said you trust me.” Stubble scraped lightly against Matt’s cheek when Frank nodded. “So trust that I will not let him break me. That I won’t get myself killed.”

The fingers on Matt’s hips dug in, tightened reflexively. “You got no idea what he’s--”

“I know better than to underestimate a man whose training was similar to yours.”

“After what I did to him, the way I left him, Bill’s not gonna stop until he’s taken his pound of my flesh,” Frank said. “He thinks I consider you a brother, and that’s fucking bad enough, Matt. If he--”

“We aren’t making a show of whatever this is.” Matt slid a hand up Frank’s chest, with a thought in mind to soothe the kindling riot contained there, beneath the muscle, beneath bone. “I wasn’t even sure...”

Frank leaned back. “What?”

“After--” 

Hugo whined, his head butting in between them. One front paw stepped insistently on Matt’s foot. 

“Okay, all right.” Matt kissed Frank, quickly, and it wasn’t enough but he still let go. “I should take him out. It’s been a while.”

“I’ll do it.” Frank got Hugo’s collar and leash out from the back of a drawer. “You want food?”

A yawn delayed Matt’s answer. “That’d be good,” he said, swiping a hand over his face. “Thanks.”

Once the door shut and Matt was certain Hugo hadn’t planted himself on the steps, refusing to budge until Matt joined them, he dropped onto the couch. Swung his legs up and closed his eyes.

****

Matt woke when Frank shifted in the chair opposite him. A book in his hands, he turned pages intermittently, in both directions. It was like a compulsion, Matt’s need to know what exactly drew Frank back to sentences he’d already read. He wanted to ask for the title; where Frank found it, because Matt doubted he’d be interested in the few books Foggy hadn’t come back for; if he’d mind reading a few lines out loud.

Instead, pushing up on his elbow, Matt asked, “Waffles or pancakes?”

“Waffles, bacon.” Frank set the book down. “Figured scrambled eggs gone cold wouldn’t hold much appeal.”

“Did you eat?”

“Waitin’ on you, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Pick a fairy tale, Frank.” Matt padded over to the table Hugo patiently guarded. “Or I might start calling you Grimm.”

Frank laughed. “Not a bad fit.”

“Get over here.” Matt put out plates, forks. Pulled two chairs away from the table, shoved one towards Frank, pointlessly, because Frank moved it back, closer, before he sat down. “Would it ruin your appetite to tell me about him? At least what you think I need to know?”

“There isn’t much that can put me off food, hasn’t been for years.” True to his word, Frank drenched his waffles in sweet syrup. “Thing you need to know above anything else is there’s nothin’ redeemable there. There’s not a thing in this world Bill loves so much as himself. Not God, or his country, or people who considered him family. He’s not gonna stop. Christ, Matt, ain’t that fucking obvious by now? You know what he’s been doin’, you know how--”

“Notice I’m not arguing with you.” Matt pointed at a takeout box containing fried potatoes, generously salted. “Are you going to eat those?”

Frank splayed his hand over the lid, the styrofoam protesting loudly beneath the press of his palm. “I was thinking about it.”

“Think faster.” Hugo laid his head in Matt’s lap, nostrils flaring, unwilling to miss a scent or scrap of food. Matt broke off a corner of the waffle, felt the muscles in Hugo’s throat work to practically swallow the piece whole. Not a second after, a cold, wet nose prodded Matt’s wrist. Feeding the dog a strip of bacon, he admitted, “I can’t remember the last time I had something that could actually be considered a meal.”

“My candle burns at both ends,” Frank murmured, sliding another waffle onto Matt’s plate, “it will not last the night, but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, it gives a lovely light.”

Matt angled his head towards the echo of Frank’s voice. “Did you...Is that what you were just reading?”

“No.” Frank took one of the hash browns, gave Matt the other. “Eat that before Hugo decides it’s past time he helped himself.”

Sticky with syrup, Matt licked his fingers, asked, “Will you at least tell me who wrote it? An idea of how often I can expect you to quote poetry would be nice too. I wasn’t adequately prepared.”

“How you expect me to remember a name or anything at all while you’re sittin’ there sucking on your fingers is--Shit, Matty, it’s beyond me.”

Matt smiled, but before he could reply, Frank fixed his thumb to the curve of Matt’s mouth, stroked slowly from corner to corner. 

“Been wantin’ to do that.” Frank exhaled, unsteadily. “Millay. It was Millay who wrote that.” 

Plate and utensil in hand, Matt went to the sink. Lukewarm water and soap suds ran over his wrist as he rinsed off bacon grease, butter smeared between streams of syrup. “I’ll have to find something on audio.”

“I’ll get a copy of her stuff.” Frank stepped up to wipe a towel over the dishes. “Read it to you sometime.”

The response Matt needed--one stripped of surprise at the offer; one that made his eagerness seem reasonable--was nowhere to be found. His focus had narrowed too sharply to Frank’s elbow, grazing his with every swipe of the towel. To the idea that Frank might be content to spend the entire hour drying two plates and two forks. 

Blinded as he had been, and with all that happened after his father had died, Matt knew something about losing his bearings. How to find his stride and act like he’d never stumbled. None of it did him any good where Frank was concerned.

“Thank you, I...I’d like that.” Simple, sure, but Matt hoped it would suffice. “You’re going to tell David?”

“Later,” Frank said. “He’s got a...Leo’s taking chorus. Her concert is after school.”

“I’ll have to leave to meet with a client shortly, but it shouldn’t run longer than an hour, if you want me to--”

Frank leaned over, kissed the sensitive skin beneath Matt’s ear. “You should come back here, get some more sleep, or just fucking sit down with Hugo and do nothing for a while. That candle’s gotta burn on, Matt, long after tonight.”

“It will,” Matt said. “I mean, whatever else happens, we’re going to have that sex you mentioned. Sooner rather than later, I hope.”

“Yeah?” Frank breathed. “You gonna take everything I give you, Matty?”

_Try me_ , Matt thought, and might have even said if only to reduce the charge, the rising heat, but Frank was running his forefinger up the inside of Matt’s wrist, along his pulse line, like he was looking for the truth in the same place Matt often found it. 

“Yes, absolutely,” Matt said, confident Frank would know he meant it. “But...What about what I give in return, Frank? Are you sure--”

“I am.” Frank’s voice was soft, his heart beat unfaltering. “Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always with the caveats, that's me, so here we are: no guarantees, bad writing habits/quirks, etc. But I'll ask anyway...Anyone up for more?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot adequately express how much your comments have meant or how sustaining they've been. Thank you for taking the time to let me know you've been enjoying this.

“He went and saw that lawyer again.”

“What’s that make, Fitz?” The top two rows of his books were out of order, Billy noticed. A sizable gap where the First Folio had been that morning. A signed, first edition of Hemingway’s _A Farewell to Arms_ also gone. Crossing to the black lacquered shelves encasing the matching set of wide windows, he glanced back at Fitz. “Third time? Fourth?”

“Second.”

Billy knocked on the bare wood in front of a battered paperback copy of _Dorian Gray_ , his knuckle scraping the cracked spine. “The dead don’t have rights, Frankie, so what do you still need from him? Hmm? What about you, Fitz, you got any ideas?”

Whether the question was real or rhetorical an answer was rarely supplied anymore. Billy’s men, those who’d managed to stick longer than a week, huddled in their silence like it was a bomb shelter.

“Pay him a visit.”

“Who? Cas--”

“The lawyer, Fitz, for Christ’s sake.” No point in correctly reordering the books, not yet. But the one leaning into the space left by the missing Folio, Billy took that one down. Stroked the deckled edge of the copy of _Troilus and Criseyde_ that, had he paid for it, would’ve set him back over fifteen grand. “There’s a dispute over an inheritance you’d like him to sort out. You want what’s rightfully yours. Fill in any blanks and keep it plausible. Open the door for me.”

Peripherally, Billy caught Fitz’s hesitant nod, the young man’s brown eyes glazed over like a lesser animal’s when confronted with a command beyond its limited reach. Ultimately, he’d sort it or he wouldn’t. And if he didn’t, there were plenty more like him. Men more than eager to move up the ranks. To take a bigger share. In at least one case, to help himself to things no hands other than Billy’s should touch.

“And Fitz,” Billy returned his gaze to the shelf, that sizable gap, “find Chapel for me.”

****

“I don’t need to point out that Matt’s roughly a thousand times better than a champion MMA fighter, has those super souped-up reflexes, uncanny hearing, and a massive dog that would disembowel the poor son of a bitch who somehow managed to get past his favorite human’s guard,” David squinted at Frank, “do I?” 

“Are you askin’ if I need to be reminded he’s not helpless--”

“Oh, man, did you use that word?” David asked, and Frank never had cared for that particular expression on the man’s face, or the laugh that accompanied it. All breath and no percussion. ”And do you think he recorded the conversation, because I have _got_ to--”

“David,” Frank said, thumb and forefinger digging into either eye, “shut the fuck up. Just for one goddamned minute, all right?” 

Both hands in the air, palms out, David nodded. 

Frank picked up the chipped mug of coffee he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. “You’ve seen some of how Matt works.” Tipped the thing to shift the liquid away from the stains marring the ceramic. “Always playing fair, or trying to, no matter who or what’s comin’ at him.” Set it down on a spill of sugar. “That shit ain’t going to work with Bill.”

“From what I can tell, Fisk didn’t play fair, and Matt’s still standing.” David jerked his thumb towards the diner’s window and, beyond the glass, to the buildings that broke the skyline. “For fuck’s sake, Frank, a high rise literally falling on top of him couldn’t keep Matt down. How indestructible do you need him to be?”

“You think I haven’t gone over all that and then some? Tried to tell myself--” Frank frowned and shoved a hand in his pocket, tugged out the phone vibrating against his thigh. Only three people had his number: the man in front of him, Karen, gone upstate for a couple of days for a press conference, and--”Matt? What’s--”

“I was approached by a would-be client,” Matt said, hushed, and still his voice came back with an echo. Had to be in a hallway, Frank thought. Or a stairwell. “It was one of Billy’s men from the warehouse.”

The hand on the phone became a vice. Frank bit out, “Where are you?”

“Nowhere you should turn up. Certainly not now.”

“Why is Hugo growling? He’s not still there--”

“Give me some credit,” Matt said, on the heels of a muffled noise that Frank figured was him switching the phone to his left hand to soothe the dog with his right. “I recognized his voice, but if Billy was hoping for subtlety, he chose the wrong man for the job. David’s there with you?”

Never mind that he was well aware of the answer, Matt had phrased it as a question, and so Frank responded in kind. “He’s here.”

“Have him look for a Fitz Fridlund. If he was instructed to provide a fake name, he was too nervous to come up with one on the spot.”

“Fitz Fridlund,” Frank repeated, eyes on David, who dug for one of the phones he carried, lowered his head, and got to work. “Why nervous?”

“He mentioned an inheritance dispute, but when I pushed for details, his explanation was more stutter than substance.”

Frank cut his gaze to the counter to catch the waitress furtively looking at their table. A slight shake of his head and she put the fresh pot of coffee back on the burner. “Bill didn’t prep him, huh?”

“I doubt the inheritance bit was the kid’s idea. But my favorite part was when he said he was surprised to find me still breathing. After all, I did lose the Punisher’s case.”

“The fuck you did--”

“It’s all right, Frank, my feelings weren’t--”

David slapped his phone down in the center of the table. “Got him.”

A rap sheet, birth certificate, car title. Frank scanned each, swiped through the rest. “There’s stuff here.”

“Such as?”

“Give me a few and I’ll bring it by--”

“That’s not a good idea.” Matt’s tone was as familiar to Frank as a cement wall and not nearly as breakable. “Right now I have no reason to believe Billy thinks I’m anything more than your attorney, Frank. If you come to see me directly after--”

“I told you, someone tails me it’s because I let--”

“And if we don’t give Billy an excuse to look closer, we could use this--use Fitz--to our advantage,” Matt said, so damn reasonable it set Frank’s teeth on edge. “Give it a few days, and then--”

“Two.” The tight clench of Frank’s jaw sharpened the number into something that had more in common with a knifepoint. “That’s all you’re gonna get.”

“I don’t like it either, Frank,” Matt said softly, then. As means went, it was more than enough for Frank to let out the stalled air in his lungs. “I have to go. I’ll check in with David later.”

“Just...” Frank looked out the window. Graffiti marked up the garage across the street, layers of spray paint so thick the message was blurred. With David there, fiddling with the tines of his fork like he could turn preoccupation into privacy, Frank had to settle for, “Sooner rather than later, Matty. Don’t forget that.”

Disconnecting the call, Frank tossed the phone on the table. 

“I take it Matt’s practical side continues to piss you off?”

“What I am is sick and goddamned tired of this cat and mouse shit,” Frank growled. “If Bill would just fucking come straight--”

“You know why he isn’t,” David said. “And from where I’m sitting at the moment, whether Russo knows it or not, he’s getting exactly what he wants.” 

Frank rolled his shoulders back against the booth. “I’ll say it again, you should take Sarah, the kids, and--”

“There’s no place we could go, Frank, you know? At least here I can do something,” David said. Every bit as earnest as Matt had been, and Frank wondered, he had to, how it was these people could be in his life so willingly. What it was that made them bone-deep believe they could rest easily there. “I can help you, and Matt, and I can trust you both to help me keep my family safe.”

“Matt? Yeah, you better fucking believe it. My track record ain’t--”

David aggressively shook his head. “That’s _bullshit_.”

Frank shrugged and put down enough cash to cover the check and tip. He slid out of the booth. “Let Leo know I’ll be by soon, would you?”

While the diner had suffered from the heat of its own ovens and narrow aisle, the air outside was cool and damp in the aftermath of a lazy kind of rain. Frank started to walk, kept the matter between his boots and the abused pavement. If he thought on it too much he’d get turned around, find himself at Matt’s door. Good sense offered up like so many wilted flowers in his hands.

Choosing a street crowded with distracted pedestrians and pawn shops, Frank ducked into a drug store, got what he needed and didn’t say a word to the girl behind the counter, popping pink bubbles that smelled sweet as cotton candy while she did her thing. 

He crossed to the opposite curb, walked the length of a block, then another, until he came to a section of sidewalk bisected by tables buckling under the weight of row after row of used books. Hardcovers with faded dust jackets, loosely alphabetized: Brontë on down to Updike. On the ground, plastic milk crates contained dozens of paperbacks. Romance novels mixed in with Stephen King’s older offerings, a few slim L’Amour’s, half a dozen Garfield comics.

Several of Dumas’ novels in a stack with a beat-up, leather-bound copy of _Don Quixote_ propped open the door. Frank stepped inside.

“Is there something I can help you find?” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Frank said, watching as the older woman who’d spoken shifted piles from the counter to a cart. “You got a poetry section?”

“Only about four full cases of it.” She led him to the back corner of the store, where the only thing more abundant than the books were dust motes. Where a scent like mildew rose up from the warped linoleum beneath Frank’s feet. “Prices are negotiable.”

“Appreciate it.”

To fit more in less space, Frank supposed, the volumes had been jammed in horizontally. He followed several splintered shelves with his finger, slowing when Lowell gave way to Matthews, then Millay. A copy of her complete poems that had seen better days. He flipped to the foxed index, noted the amount the store was asking for it penciled in at the top right, and glanced down the long list of titles.

He brought it to the front. “I’ll pay the eight,” he said, “no problem.”

“How about that.” The woman’s warm smile widened when she looked at the name on the cover. “I guess it’s a day for new and refreshing.” After the book went in brown paper, the bag sealed with a precise, tight fold, she passed it back over the counter. “Enjoy her work, sweetheart.”

Frank nodded. “You have yourself a nice evening.”

When his phone went off after he’d crossed another block, Frank yanked it out of his pocket so fast he almost dropped the fucking thing. “Ma--”

“Sorry, no, it’s the other ridiculously attractive man in your life,” David said, amused, and doing jack shit to disguise it. “You want a ride back to the house? Since Matt’s not there to do it, Leo’s helping her mom make cookies. She’s requested your presence for taste testing purposes.”

“Leo know you’re using her as a coercion tactic?”

“Honestly,” David said, “if it meant seeing you, she’d be all for it.”

Because it might be that David was right, Frank asked, “You know where I am?”

“I forgive you for that. Be there in two.”

Stowing the phone, Frank leaned against a light pole. Picked at a sticker peeling away from the paint. Had it all but ripped off by the time David pulled up to the curb, both windows open, Leo’s preferred decade of music playing louder than the blitz of horns at the intersection ahead.

David leaned out on his elbow, wearing the same overblown look that launched a thousand pornos. “How much?”

What was left of the sticker bounced off the bridge of David’s nose. 

After easing back into traffic, he glanced over. “I talked to Matt.” Thumping the steering wheel with his thumb, so far off the beat it had to be deliberate, David added, “Told him there wasn’t much going down tonight.”

Three sets of headlights in the wing mirror. Full moon bright. Frank kept his eyes on the grimy glass, hummed.

“He’ll probably have what I _did_ give him wrapped up in fifteen minutes. Believe it or not,” David said, “he might get a solid eight in his own bed tonight. Unless you want to invite him into--”

“David.”

“I’m just saying--”

“Nothing, you’re saying nothing.” Frank glared at David’s profile. “Because it’s not up for discussion.”

“You should know, if not for the fact that I’m a happily married man I would--”

Frank snorted, the derisive curl of his mouth caught by the rearview.

Their eyes met in the mirror. “What’s that suppose to mean?” 

“What does that mean?” Frank said, “It means pay attention to the road.”

“You think I couldn’t land Ma--”

It wasn’t a conscious decision he made to laugh. Dredged up shockingly fast from a ditch that had been desert-dry for so long, the sound was like rust: gritty, and persistent. Frank didn’t shut it down, didn’t look up from his bootlaces, the loosening knot, just tightened his hold on Millay’s poems.

In the driveway, David threw the gearshift into park. Sniffed. “I’m glad the thought of me and Matt--”

Frank, smiling slightly still, shook his head once. “Never happen.”

Rounding the van, he saw Leo shove open the front door, hit the walk at a run that cut down the distance between them to seconds. 

“Come on, Frank.” Smaller, flour-dusted fingers slid through his and tugged. “The cookies are almost all done. Which do you want to try first? Chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, or the oatmeal raisin?”

“Tough choice,” Frank said, nodding at Sarah when he stepped inside. “Think I’m gonna leave it up to you, if that’s all right?”

“Sure,” Leo said, and squeezed his hand. “Be right back.”

“Hey,” David greeted Sarah. “Frank thinks Matt wouldn’t hook up with me, but--”

As Sarah snickered, said something to David that Frank heard as an echo of his own thoughts on the subject, Frank made his way to the kitchen. Leo looked up from the plate she’d carefully arranged with three cookies overlapped in order of smallest to largest. 

“I couldn’t decide either. So maybe close your eyes,” she said, “pick one.”

He did as she asked, eyes shut before he reached out. Matt probably wouldn’t have needed the guidance, but when Frank missed the plate for a second time, Leo giggled, took his hand. “Here.”

“Here?” he asked, deliberately fumbling, bumping his knuckle into the corner of the plate. “You sure?”

“Almost--There!”

Grabbing the cookie at the bottom of the pile, Frank took half of it in one bite, warm chocolate melting on the back of his tongue. He finished the whole thing off before opening his eyes, found Leo’s wide open and waiting on his expression.

“Man, that’s good,” he said, truthfully, but he would have lied, wouldn’t have thought twice about it, if he knew how the praise was going to light up Leo’s face. “You’re gonna make bank on these, sweetheart.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, and went for another one, “no doubt.”

“I didn’t think they’d poison anyone,” she said, watching him polish off the last cookie on the plate, “but that’s a relief. That you like them.”

“Will you set aside a few more for me? I’ll pay.”

Leo pointed to the sandwich bag next to the sink, neatly filled. “I already did.”

“But you’re not going to pay for them,” Sarah told him, from the doorway. “Not like Matt does after he helps _make_ them.”

“Every time,” David said, snagging a cookie. “I told her it’s no use trying to argue with a lawyer, but--”

Sarah lifted a shoulder. “I still try.”

“Every time,” David repeated, combing his beard for crumbs. “He’s even more stubborn than you are, Frank, which, you know, mystery. How that’s possible.”

“Mind if I make a phone call,” Frank asked, out of nowhere, maybe, but he’d clocked the time on the stove’s display, “downstairs?

David turned to Sarah, waggled his eyebrows, what there was of them, like an asshole. “Go for it. There’s a cot--”

“I know where the fu--stupid cot is, David.” Frank followed the counter to Leo, brushed a thumb across her cheek, smoothing away a bit of powdered sugar. “Thanks for the cookies, sweetheart.”

“Say hi to Matt for me.”

Frank promised he would and closed the basement door quietly, firmly. He stripped off his sweatshirt and left it on David’s chair before taking the book out of its bag, discarding the brown paper in a bin filled with crumpled napkins and parchment that smelled like the business side of a deli counter. 

The cot was there, no point in not using it, Frank decided, stretching out on the thin mattress. He sat there for a full minute, the phone pressed to his forehead, trying to tether his restless pulse. It refused to fucking comply. Unwilling to wait any longer, he made the call.

“Frank.” 

“Matty,” Frank rasped, his eyes closed, the weight on his shoulders letting up, letting go. “You busy?”

“Not anymore.” Frank’s hearing may not be anywhere on a level with Matt’s, but he knew the sound of silk sheets sliding one over another when he heard it. “I was thinking about you--”

“Yeah?” Frank murmured, “What about me?”

Matt hesitated. “Hugo missed you.”

A lifetime separated Frank from the soft edge of the world. If he thought about it, if he went back in his head, through the minefield of his memories, he could see its shape, could remember its bright warmth. Knew what it would cost him if he returned to it and--“I missed him too. Couldn’t stop thinking about him all day.”

A light laugh. “He’s glad to hear it,” Matt said, and Frank pictured that smile, the one he wanted beneath his tongue, against his skin. “As much as this sucks, I really do think it’s for the--”

“You weren’t wrong,” Frank allowed. “I got that copy of Millay’s poetry. If you’re still interested.”

“I am.” He said it quick, like Matt thought Frank might retract the offer. “Will you read one now? Or would you rather wait un--”

“Now’s good,” Frank said. “You and Hugo comfortable?”

Another whisper--that slick scrap of sound--as Matt settled into the silk. Frank’s gaze fixed on the box of condoms he’d bought, sticking out some from the pocket of his sweatshirt. For what he had in mind, all the things he wanted to do to Matt, and with him, Frank would have to go back for more, but for the sooner part of their equation, when that time came--

“Frank?”

“Hmm?”

“Everything all right?”

Half a dozen possible answers formed around the question, but what came out of Frank’s mouth was, “I’m not with you,” and he left it at that. “Ready?”

“When you are.”

His shoulders at rest against the wall, Frank opened to a random page. “Time does not bring relief,” he read, “you all have lied who told me time would ease me of my pain. I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide--”

Matt drew in a breath so deep Frank felt it in his chest, felt it lick at his own lungs and burn.

“The old snows melt from every mountain-side, and last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; but last year’s bitter loving must remain heaped on my heart and my old thoughts abide.”

Frank cleared his throat.

“There are a hundred places where I fear to go, so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place, where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, there is no memory of him here. And so stand stricken, so remembering him.”

There was Frank’s breath after that, and Matt’s. Synced and not at all steady. Stretched taut between two beds set too many goddamned miles apart. A distance Frank would eliminate if Matt would just say the word. _Say the fucking word, Matty_.

“That was...To think there was actually a time when I thought I understood you.”

“What,” Frank marked a page with his finger tucked in against the spine, “you’re sayin’ I didn’t immediately strike you as an aesthete?”

“It was so obvious,” Matt said, laughing, “and it snuck right by me.”

After a contented second, two, Frank said, “Is this...Matt, the poetry and shit, it’s all right? I haven’t--It’s been a while since--”

“We’ll have to test the theory sometime,” Matt said, “but I think your voice might be enough. I think, if you read more, if you didn’t stop, I could come just from listening to you.”

Frank groaned, his stomach tightening. Yeah, it’d been a long, long time since he’d felt the teeth of a need so sharp, so relentless.

“I get why you...But if all of her work is like that we should choose another poet.”

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” Frank recited, holding back the rest, the grief that trailed after that line, because Matt had answered when he called. Because Matt wasn’t one of the poem’s ghosts, and Frank could get his proof of life with his hands, with his mouth. “That closer to what you had in mind?”

“That depends,” Matt murmured, “would you prefer to be with me when I orgasm or--”

“Fuck,” Frank clenched the solitary sheet on the cot, ripping it from its mooring, “yes, I want to be there. Want to be with you.”

“Then maybe hold off on the rest,” Matt said. “We’ve got time.”

****

“Fitz.” Billy stripped off one glove--white, pristine--and dropped it on his desk between the Folio and Hemingway. “What’s the word?” 

“I gotta give him more information. Details.” Fitz kept both hands in his pockets, Billy noted, not that those tight confines did him much good. Fear was an itch beneath his skin, and it was amusing, truly, to watch him work so hard not to scratch at it. “If I do, he’ll take the case.”

Billy smiled. Ignored the flinch Fitz unfortunately couldn’t quite contain. “That is exactly what I was hoping to hear.” 

He’d kept the other glove--stained a dark, dried red over his fingerprints and through the palm--away from his collection, but as it had served its purpose, Billy tossed it in the bin to the left of Fitz’s feet. The kid couldn’t seem to help but glance down, pick over the other contents. 

He swallowed so fast, and so hard, Billy had to give Fitz credit for not choking on it.

“Branwell’s around,” Billy pointed out, “if you need help with the homework. I don’t want those details tripping you up.”

“Sure.” Fitz nodded, and nodded again, and stood there. “Okay.”

“Was there something else?”

“Well, after, do you want me to get Murdock to--”

“No, absolutely not. You’re going to leave that to me,” Billy said. “Understood?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blame for all of the literature mentioned here can be securely set down at Jon's feet. No one should look that sexy reading Melville. Also, it says complete, I know it does, and it's going to stay that way, but...Stick with me?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To all of you sticking with me, thank you!

Matt sat back in his chair, attempted to shift his feet under Hugo’s weight. “I’m confident I can yield a satis--”

“So you’ll do it?” Fitz interrupted, uncapping and recapping the Chapstick he’d been shuffling from finger to finger for five minutes straight. “I gave you enough?”

“I believe so, for now,” Matt said. “I’ll be in touch.”

“But I can call, right? If something comes up?”

“Absolutely.”

If their last meeting indicated a pattern of behavior, Fitz wouldn’t take Matt’s hand and so he didn’t extend it, but stood with his palm lightly braced on Hugo’s head. It was just as well: The dog had been unsettled since they’d entered the Library, letting out a series of muted noises, standing or sitting between Matt and anyone who crossed through the room. If Matt wasn’t touching him, Hugo whined, pressed back against Matt’s knees.

“You gotta bring that thing every time?” 

Matt arched an eyebrow. “Thing?” 

“Never liked dogs,” Fitz muttered, idly kicking at the table’s leg, next to Hugo’s forefoot. “Always shedding. Drooling. Pissing wherever. You ask me, every one of ‘em should be put d--”

“We’re done here, Mr. Fridlund,” Matt cut in sharply, “so you’ll have to excuse me, I have another meeting to prepare for.”

“I get that.” Fitz shuffled back a few steps. “Be seeing you.”

When the kid’s irregular heart beat was overtaken by an insistence of car horns and the foot traffic outside, Matt went down on his haunches in front of his silently snarling dog. “It’s okay,” he said softly, stroking Hugo’s head, along the tense line of his back. “I’m okay.” 

His snout tucked beneath Matt’s chin, Hugo huffed, followed up that draft of warm air with the cool swipe of his tongue.

“If it makes you feel better,” Matt said, “I don’t like him either.”

The kid had shown up late, the pungent scent of cigar smoke saturating his clothing and hair. His heart rate strung out on nerves. He kept to the edge of the wooden chair when he sat, bouncing both legs beneath the table. Occasionally losing track of his feet, the worn tread of his boots scuffed the floor, the toe of Matt’s dress shoe. 

Matt had listened with some amusement to a haltingly delivered monologue on Fitz’s nonexistent brother, William. They’d never been close, Fitz told him. Bill thought he was the shit, believed all of the finer things in life should be handed to him. Whenever that failed to happen, he was prone to temper, to violence, often exacted on Fitz and their mother. A woman Bill had never lifted a finger for, and so deserved nothing, not a dime of the money she’d left behind.

When pressed, Fitz returned carefully prepared answers. He provided dates, names of hospice workers, bills he’d paid out of pocket. Every major detail was so thoroughly handled, Matt began to care less about what Russo thought he’d get out of the charade and more about the person who had spun the backstory, who had taken the time to forge documents meant to convince a blind man of Fitz’s legitimacy. 

A woman in soft soled shoes approached from the staff’s Reference desk. “Is everything okay, sir?”

“We’re fine.” Matt explained, “He was just having a moment.”

“Slacker,” she reached a hand out to Hugo, inviting a sniff, “I’ve already had three, and my shift started barely an hour ago.”

“Then I’m the one who should be asking if _you’re_ all right.” Matt stood and smiled. Her heart beat fluttered, caught off guard. “I hope my client wasn’t so loud that--”

She waved that off with a hand. “The noise wasn’t the problem, more that he smelled like the inside of a humidor.”

Laughing, Matt said, “Imagine it from where I was sitting.”

“Yeah,” she adjusted what she carried to rest the bulk of it on her hip, “I’d really rather not.” 

“What’s odd--Excuse me,” Matt patted his jacket, the phone audibly vibrating in an interior pocket, “I have to take this. I’ll go out to the hallway.”

“If it’s going to be quick, you can take it here.”

“Thank you.” Matt waited until her footsteps had retreated to the shelves lining the back wall. “Fra--”

“At this rate I’m going to develop a serious, potentially debilitating complex,” David said, humor out of habit, but mostly distracted. Matt counted three keyboards, David working across them with casual, clattering speed. “I mean, Christ, it’s like you two have no concept of a world in which other people have phones. Or exist. But, hey, it’s fine. How’d it go with Fitz?”

“Reading between the lines,” Matt said, pointedly ignoring everything that preceded David’s last question, “he thinks his boss is a materialistic bitch.”

David snorted. “We could start a club.” He picked up something wrapped in tinfoil, dropped it as quickly. “Shit, that’s hot.”

“Are you ever not eating?”

“Food is one of life’s pleasures, Matt. Gotta take them where you can, you know? Speaking of which--”

“No,” Matt said, firmly, “we’re not.”

“Your two days are up.”

By several hours, Matt knew, because Fitz had chosen their meeting time supposedly and adamantly based on the end of his work day. It had been presented as a take it or leave it scenario that Matt couldn’t pass on, even knowing it was a bluff. 

It had also crossed his mind that the additional downtime might not be the worst thing to happen to Frank. 

They may not have been covering the same streets, but cruisers had passed often enough for Matt to catch the scanner’s static, reports of cop-accompanied suspects being admitted to general or the ICU from the ER, treated for copious knife and bullet wounds, broken bones, various internal injuries. All of the men picked up from locations David had given to Frank before listing off several more for Matt.

Frank hadn’t stopped or slowed, not once all night, shutting down deal after deal. That kind of sustained fight, Matt was intimately familiar with the exhaustion that set in after the fact, every muscle aching, minor injuries exacerbated by standing, sitting, breathing.

Matt might have felt Frank’s absence as he initially had his sight--keenly, with a desperation that occasionally slipped into panic when he questioned if he would ever get it back--but that feeling didn’t matter. He could-- _would_ \--deal with it if that extra time apart meant Frank got the kind of rest he rarely allowed himself.

Gathering the thick envelope Fitz had dropped on the table, his cane, Hugo’s leash, Matt said, “Is he--”

“He left for yours over an hour ago.”

“If Fitz contacts Billy--”

“I know the drill.” David was smiling, Matt heard it, had a fair idea of what was coming ne--”But I might give it a few hours. In case your mouth or hands or--”

“Just out of curiosity,” Matt said, “if I was Frank, what would I do right now?”

David sighed. “You’d probably hang up without--”

Matt ended the call, shoved the phone in his pocket. Unfolding the cane, he navigated the reading room’s long, narrow aisle, with Hugo sticking close to his side. The dog’s heart rate had resumed its resting pace, didn’t budge from that even rhythm when Matt clipped the leash onto his collar. 

“One stop, then home.”

****

David’s eyes darted across three screens, scanning the grainy street scenes for--“There you are.”

Fitz leaned against a newspaper automat covered in faded bumper stickers and just a disgusting amount of discarded gum, phone held to his ear. Matt had used the word jittery, and he wasn’t wrong. If anything, he’d undersold the tendency. The kid couldn’t seem to help himself, fiddling repeatedly with the coin return nob, pressing a finger against the change slot. Glancing at passers-by like they were infectious diseases. His mouth opened, eventually, probably to--

A few keystrokes, then David turned up the volume.

“You made it happen.”

David watched Fitz nod. “Yeah,” he said, riding the line between smug and subservience, “I did. That door you wanted’s been kicked wide open.”

****

Frank kept watch at the window, the room at his back narrowing until it contained nothing but the sound of Matt’s footsteps approaching from the hall, Hugo trailing just behind him into the living room. “Fridlund give you any trouble?”

“Not really.” Matt must’ve moved to take his jacket off; a shot of gray darker than wet cement caught Frank’s eye at the corner of the couch. “Just when he threatened Hugo.”

That brought Frank’s head around. Narrowed his eyes. “He did what?”

“Fitz doesn’t care for dogs,” Matt said, moving into the bedroom with a black plastic bag, “probably because Billy treats him worse than one.”

“There’s not a goddamned reason good enough--”

“No, there isn’t.” Matt crossed to the kitchen, went about filling Hugo’s bowls with food and fresh water. “And I’m going to be brutally upfront with him when I correct that mistake.”

The tone might’ve come off as casual, but it tread a vicious line, unforgiving as any fist, any kind of bullet. Frank had caught the blunt edge of it once or twice, had to swallow the blood it left in his mouth. 

When he said, “I’ll stay out of your way,” he meant to do just that.

“Good.” Matt considered him from the distance Frank maintained, hands resting on those trim hips. “What’s your excuse for doing that now?”

“What’s my...” Frank took a single, yearning step closer, clenched his own hands. “If there’s anything more that needs to be said about Fridlund, about any of it, tell me now, Matt, before I touch you. I do that and--”

He shook his head, looked towards the kitchen where the dog was curled up, asleep.

Bypassing the couch, the coffee table, Matt said, “His story was reasonably solid.” Too fucking slow, Frank thought, the pulse in his ears so loud, it nearly deafened him to Matt’s report. “With Billy set up as the piece of shit brother, who not only abused Fitz, but also their mother.” Matt stopped walking, finally, stood in front of Frank with his glasses off, those eyes of his that couldn’t quite settle on a shade illuminated by the billboard’s brash light. “When Fitz said he hated Bill it wasn’t a lie. If I can get past the fear, that could work in our favor.” Joining their hands, Matt skimmed his thumb up Frank’s, knuckle to knuckle. “The rest can wait.”

Frank nodded, exhaled. Studied Matt’s open expression, and when just looking at it wasn’t enough, lifted his free hand to trace his trigger finger over soft lips, that strong jaw, the slight cleft in Matt’s chin. 

“The last couple of days,” Frank’s throat felt tight, the words scraping, “don’t ask me to do something like that again.”

Too smart, too cognizant of how their world worked to make a promise like that, Matt kept his mouth shut. Walked backwards in the direction of the bedroom, his grip on Frank’s hand tighter than before.

Frank went, and given reason to, wondered if it was possible Matt didn’t know, if he actually had a doubt in his head revolving around whether or not Frank would follow. Like he hadn’t gone to that convent to get Matt back. Like he never said he would’ve gone farther. _For Christ’s sake_. Matt should’ve figured it out weeks ago: Frank would track him to whatever godforsaken place he wound up in, if it ever came to that, if that was what it took to hear his voice. To spend even one fucking minute with him.

Matt paused beside the bed. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Frank confirmed, and removed his coat, thinking to offer Matt proof of it. But when he reached for the next layer, the shirt he hadn’t bothered to button in his rush to go, to get to the apartment before he lost his fucking mind sitting around waiting, Matt stopped him. “Wha--”

The thin cotton of Frank’s tank stretched, taking shape around scarred knuckles, long fingers. Splayed warm and wide over Frank’s ribs, Matt stayed his hand there for a moment, a second, a glancing minute, until Frank breathed out, ragged, some kind of question in the sound. 

The tank cuffed Matt’s wrist as he slid that branding hand up Frank’s sternum. One fingertip fit into Frank’s clavicle, drew a soft line across his collarbone, circled the scar below it. Turned that circle once more, then again. 

Frank closed his eyes. Tipped his head to the side. Gave up his throat to Matt’s mouth. The scrape of his teeth over Frank’s spiking pulse.

A light tug on the worn denim’s shirttail. “Take this off.” 

Rolling a shoulder, the other, Frank stripped the shirt down his arms. Let the floor at Matt’s feet have it. The tank’s hem rode up his back, grazed his shoulder blades, his neck. Matt pulled it off and tossed it aside, beyond the reach of Frank’s peripheral. Stepped in so close the slip of his tie touched Frank’s skin like cold water.

“Lose something, Matty,” Frank rasped. “Anything.”

It nearly became a regret, that request, when Matt’s heat eased back. 

He reached up to the knot at his throat, worked it loose. The tie came off, unsettling the longer strands of Matt’s dark hair, spilled them over his forehead. Digging blunt nails into the calluses on his palms, Frank watched as Matt freed button after button. Another second of it and Frank was going to tear--

“I like this shirt.”

His brow creased, Frank glanced up. “Okay.”

“That means no ripping it off.” Matt’s grin kept to one side, deepening the shadow in that dimple. “You can tell me to go faster.” He paused with the shirt still tucked in, gaped open. “Or help me--”

Spreading the material to either side, Frank peeled it back. Pushed it down Matt’s arms to his wrists. Matt undid the buttons at the cuffs, while Frank stood there, taking in the thin, silvered scars on his chest and abdomen. Staring at the taut stretch of skin over lean, defined muscle. So goddamned gorgeous, and Matt was his to taste, to touch.

Frank rolled his lip between his teeth, bit down, reinforcing reality with that pinprick of pain.

Matt lifted Frank’s right hand to his mouth. Pressed each knuckle--bruised, abraded--to his lips. “I can’t know what you’re thinking, Frank,” he said, quietly, “but if your heart beat is lying, if you don’t actually want to--”

Frank tightened his hold on the hand in his. “You’ve got it wrong, Matty. Got it turned around.” He licked his lips, whispered, “I want you so fucking--”

That mouth Frank had dreamed about since day one slanted over his own parted lips. Took his words, and his breath, and replaced them with an unceasing, pacing hunger. Frank groaned--low, and guttural--and dragged his mouth down Matt’s jaw to his throat, drawing on the skin that followed the curve to Matt’s shoulder with his tongue and teeth, intent on deepening, on darkening the paler shade.

Matt hummed. Said Frank’s name like it was something soft, like it was a sigh.

Hearing it, a fine tremor shook the hand Frank had on Matt’s nape, the fingers he had buried in his hair. “This--It’s not gonna be it,” Frank pulled back to see Matt’s face, “not gonna be the only time we do this. Tell me you fucking know that.”

Matt smiled, and Frank wouldn’t hesitate, he’d go down on his knees for him. 

“You’re going to fuck me,” Matt said, tugging Frank’s belt open and free of the loops, “this time. But I want inside of you--”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Frank said, voice raw, too rough, “ _Matty_ \--”

“Is that a yes?” Matt asked, and again Frank thought, distantly, _How is it you don’t know_? “Would you--”

“Whatever you want,” Frank pulled Matt’s belt clear, cast the smooth strip of leather aside, “next time, the time after, you can have at it. Have me.”

All the lines they’d drawn across rooftops, down the middle of dark basements, Matt had never stepped back from even one, but when Frank laid a hand on his chest, pressed him down on those silk sheets, he didn’t resist. Readily relinquished that measure of control. 

Propped up on his elbows, his head held at a soft, questioning angle, Matt’s lips twitched as Frank crouched, slipped off one shoe, then the other, divesting Matt of both socks to run an index finger around his ankle, up the back of his leg to the bend of that knee. 

Frank let several seconds slip just watching Matt’s chest rise and fall with every shallow breath.

He took care of his own boots before he stood, but then Matt was there, leaning forward, fingers unerringly finding the button on Frank’s jeans. The zipper. His palms skimmed Frank’s ass, the back of his thighs, easing the jeans down. A moment later, the warmth of Matt’s mouth feathered across Frank’s abdomen, lower--

Holding himself back, away, Frank rode his hands up Matt’s thighs, over the cold gray pants he wore like another strength, a different armor. “Let me--”

Matt lifted his hips, added his hands to Frank’s to quickly strip off his pants, the black boxer briefs. Matt laid back, then, stretched out in a shadow of silk, every inch of skin bared and--“Goddamn,” Frank rasped, looking, aching in a way he wasn’t sure he ever would--could--again, “you are...”

“Getting cold,” Matt said lightly, when Frank went quiet for too long, consumed by everything Matt was offering, all he wanted Matt to have of him. “Are you going to join me or--”

Bending a knee on the mattress between Matt’s thighs, Frank leaned down, took Matt’s mouth. Got lost in the slick heat of it, lost in the drift of Matt’s hand down the cut of his hip, the other ghosting up his back, sliding into his hair.

“This for me?” Matt asked, tugging slightly on strands Frank hadn’t bothered with in a while.

“Depends.” Frank grazed his nose along Matt’s jaw. “You like it?”

Those long, skilled fingers of Matt’s sunk in, altered the angle of Frank’s head, the depth of their renewed kiss. “Mmm.”

“Guess I’ll be keeping it, then.” Running a hand down Matt’s chest, his stomach, Frank rounded the head of Matt’s cock with one finger, spiraled up to the tip. “Am I goin’ too slow for--”

Matt laughed, his abdomen rippling, a tangible echo. “I’m not complaining,” he said, “but I am...I thought--”

“You want hard and fast, say so.” 

“I don’t.” Matt wrapped his hand around Frank’s cock at the base, stroked up. Slowly. “And neither do you.”

Frank dropped his forehead to Matt’s, trembling some as the hand on him kept stroking, the pace unhurried, determined to drag out Frank’s pleasure to every fucking nerve ending. “Might have to change my mind.”

“When you do,” Matt said, and had to stop, his breath catching when Frank took him fully in hand, “there’s lube...in the bag on--”

“Yeah?” Frank smiled--in someone else’s arms, with an ease he’d thought long gone--and increased the speed, the pressure, until he got the gasp he was after, until Matt’s back arched and he was pushing up, into Frank’s touch. “You been thinking about this, Matty? At work, huh?”

“There are condoms in your jacket. Left pocket.”

A laugh at that, and a long look at the man beneath him. “Figured you’d know about those before I got ‘em out.”

Matt reached up, pulled Frank down for a quick, burning kiss. “If I keep showing off will you laugh again?”

“Yeah, I just might,” Frank murmured, the bracing hand he had splayed on the mattress shaking, taking up the silk in a clenching fist as Matt continued that slow slide up to the head of Frank’s cock, all the fucking way back down, his hold just shy of firm, because Matt _knew_. Knew what he was doing to Frank.

Relentless in every goddamn way, Frank thought, and shuddered when Matt said, simply, “Get one.”

Frank did not want to do it, did not want to let go. Didn’t want to lose that skin-on-skin connection to Matt, and he didn’t give a shit that it’d only be a minute, maybe two--however long it took to reach his discarded jacket. But he forced himself to move, to kneel and dig for the box. Snagged the bottle of lube from the bag on the bedside table, too.

Matt had used the time to shift up on the bed, unsettling the sheets. Frank paused another second to log the flushed shade of his skin against that black silk, the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, beneath the fall of dark hair. Despite all the years--all the driving pain--that’d intervened, Frank hadn’t forgotten a detail that marked his first time with--He wasn’t going to let a single fucking thing about being with Matt get buried beneath time, either.

“Frank?”

“I’m here,” Frank shifted Matt’s knees, his thighs, widening the gap between his legs, “I’m with you.”

Two tries with the bottle’s smooth cap, but then Frank had it open, coated his fingers in the cool liquid. “You just say the word if--”

“I will. I’m not worried.”

Frank absorbed those quiet words. The sincerity despite everything. Lowered his head and kissed Matt with the same hunger snapping at the edge of his every thought, with undeniable intent. Reaching down, Frank circled and teased, testing with one finger, easing in slow and shallow. He held there, with two fingers inside, when Matt stopped kissing back, his mouth open but still, his breath hot on Frank’s tongue, as he worked on relaxing tense muscles, on accepting the pressure, the burn of another finger. “Good?”

Nodding, lashes lifting over those beautiful eyes, Matt smiled. “Keep going.”

“Before,” Frank didn’t rush but found a rhythm that made Matt tremble, made him press closer, fingers tangling up in Frank’s hair, “you thought maybe I wouldn’t follow you?”

“Wh-what?”

“The way you led me in here--” Frank caught Matt’s hand, exposed the palm to his tongue and left a wet swath up its center. Guiding it between them, Frank wrapped both their hands around Matt’s cock, stroked up while his fingers slid in, out. “What do you need, Matty? What’s it--”

“What I want is _you_ ,” Matt bared his teeth, “made less coherent.” Clenching down on Frank’s fingers, he said in a low, rasping murmur, “Sooner rather than later.”

Frank’s cock twitched at the phrase. The demand. “Turning me into Pavlov’s dog with that.”

Matt grinned, the curve of that mouth sharpening as Frank removed his fingers. 

Tearing off a condom, the wrapper, Frank rolled it down to the base of his cock, covered the length of it in lubricant. Matt kept his hands on Frank’s knees, holding off, waiting. Anything Frank could’ve said then came up as so many incomplete sentences. Incoherent with a need that cut right down to the fucking bone. 

“C’mere,” Frank whispered, gathering Matt close with a hand on his nape, lining up. “Okay?”

Matt’s nose brushed his. “Okay.” 

Slowly, slowly, Frank pushed in. Stopped when Matt bit off a soft hiss.

“Shh, shh.” Frank focused on each rapid, hitched breath Matt took, on his own heart beating to crack his ribs, the heat cloaking the head of his cock all but too much. “Shh.”

Frank dipped down, grazed Matt’s jaw with a groan, denying every instinct that urged him to move, goddamn it, when Matt suddenly rolled his hips, easing Frank inside. Inch by-- _Christ_ \--inch. 

“F- _fuck_.”

“That’s the idea,” Matt said, and smiled, laughed when Frank growled, kissed it off his lips. “You don’t have to hold back.”

Out to the head, Frank rocked deep into the tight clutch of Matt’s body. “Not what I’m doing.” 

Maybe there was no safe response to that, not then. Or maybe the way Matt held Frank tighter, rose to meet his thrusts quicker, matched his fierce hunger pace for pace, maybe that was Matt’s answer. 

All Frank knew for certain was the way they moved: like they’d been together before, that seamless push and pull that built a fire, forged something stronger. All he knew was the kind of pleasure that intensified every single time Matt hummed, low in the throat he exposed, his head tipping back on the pillow. 

Frank clung to the indescribable shade of Matt’s eyes, long as he could. Gave it up only to turn to the kiss Matt claimed as he came, knuckles brushing Frank’s stomach like sparks, shoving Frank closer, over the edge of an orgasm that blocked everything from his mind that wasn’t Matt’s name.

“This is mine,” Matt whispered, long seconds after, smoothing his palm over Frank’s sweat dampened hair, “and I can hold it.”

With the rapid rhythm of his pulse coming down in the shelter of Matt’s shoulder, Frank turned the phrase over. “That’s--”

“Millay.”

****

Frank registered a repeating noise, something like bees covering the perimeter of a hive. Blinked his eyes open to a familiar ceiling streaked with muted color. The mattress dipped, leveled out after Matt got both feet on the ground, stood. At the end of the bed, Hugo lifted his head, dark eyes tracking Matt into the living room.

Raised up on an elbow, Frank cocked his head. Listened. 

“David...Wh--Yeah, he’s...One sec.”

As he crossed into the room, sunlight stripped by the frosted glass panes in the window frame to a subtler shade shifted over Matt’s skin, over the scars Frank determined to know in the same way he knew his own. Near enough to reach for, Frank snagged Matt’s free hand, tugged him back down on the mattress. Moved to make space between his legs, in his arms, for Matt to settle into. “Put it on--” 

“He already did, big guy,” David said, his good nature grating worse than any nightmare at whatever fucking time it was. “What am I interrupting? Don’t stint on the--”

“David.”

“You know, Frank, for someone who probably just got--”

“I’m going to assume Fitz contacted Billy.” Matt threaded his fingers through Frank’s over his abdomen. “How did that go?”

“Honestly, that kid might be the crankiest door opener I’ve ever seen,” David said. “Billy is going to have him set up a meet with you, Matt.”

“When?” Matt asked, in tandem with Frank’s, “Not happening.”

“Uh, who am I answering first?” 

That Matt felt the tension running through Frank’s arm to their joined hands wasn’t a question. He turned his head, caught the corner of Frank’s mouth with a kiss, before repeating, “When?”

“Expect the call this afternoon some time,” David said, subdued, maybe gauging the quality of Frank’s silence. “You’ll have final say on when if not where. Billy wants this meet on his ground.”

Matt nodded. “Even better.”

“Frank?”

His jaw clenched, Frank bit out, “Later,” and took the phone from Matt’s hand. Ended the call.

“I’m not going to argue with you about--”

“David’s gonna track you. He’ll rig something up, a camera,” Frank said quietly. “Russo looks at you wrong and--”

“I will handle it.”

Frank stared blankly at the exposed brick of Matt’s wall. “Bill likes blades. Keeps one up his sleeve.”

“He won’t get the chance to use it.” Matt leaned back, set his head against Frank’s shoulder. “And I’m bringing Hugo.”

Snorting, Frank asked, “That supposed to make me feel better about this shit?”

“Does it?”

“Yeah,” Frank pressed his lips to Matt’s dark hair, “a bit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "...I should have hopes that some people, at least, will find it a pleasure. I wonder if I shall ever be able to read it again? Is the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing--shivering and wishing to take cover?" [Virginia Woolf]
> 
> This chapter almost did not see the light of day. As it did...I hope some of you found it a pleasure. That you haven't all decided to run for the hills just yet.


	5. Chapter 5

“Will you just--Frank, stop, stop with the pacing,” David said. “Seriously, you’re making me nervous with the--” He waved a hand in the air. “That.”

Frank got ahold of the padded backrest of David’s rolling chair, hauled it back, closer. Bent to the man’s ear, so nothing of his intent got lost or muffled by so much as a hair. “I’m making you nervous? That it? You’re gonna want to leave if I’m putting you off.”

“That’s not--I’m just saying there’s a hole in my wall and Matt hasn’t even gotten out of the car yet.”

“Your wall’s fine,” Frank muttered. “Everything’s working? You’re--”

“I’m sure, yes. For the tenth time,” David said. “See for yourself.”

There was plenty to look at, divided across more screens than one man should be able to put to use for a single purpose. Frank didn’t spare a glance at the street maps, the satellite view, the endlessly scrolling code. It was all being recorded, stored, whatever the fuck David thought necessary. There was only one screen, one thing, Frank paid attention to: the pitch black leather interior of a luxury SUV, and Matt’s steady hand on Hugo’s back.

“Hear that?” David asked.

Frank leaned in, scanning the straight shot view from Matt’s cam. “What?”

David tapped a series of keys, fiddled with the volume. A leashed snarl rumbled through a set of speakers. “Hugo is not a happy camper right now.” 

Rather than use the spare seat or squeeze down on the floor, the dog had opted for Matt’s lap. Draped over both legs, Hugo was stretched out in front of Matt’s chest like a shield made of bone and blood and a hell of a lot of fur.

“That dog would do it,” Frank acknowledged. “Take the bullet.”

“For Matt? Yeah, he would. There’s a lot of that going around,” David said, handling the words gently. “Hell, at this point, I’d probably take it--”

“Doesn’t matter who the fuck goes down now, David. It’d be because of me. Because Bill wants to hurt _me_.” Frank stepped back, shoved a hand through his hair so hard, his scalp stung with it. “I should be there. I should be there to--”

“To what, Frank? Prove that Matt matters? How _much_ he matters?” David spun the chair around, faced Frank with his brow set in frustrated lines. “You gonna give Billy that? Huh? Do you want him to know--”

“Shut up,” Frank said. “Shut up.”

“You first,” David shot back. “Look, I know you’re not a sit around while someone else walks into hell kinda guy, but Matt, he’s the fucking Devil. Right? He’s got dominion over that shit. Isn’t that why you wanted him in this to begin with? Because you thought Billy wouldn’t be able to get a handle on him?”

Frank licked his lips. Looked over David’s shoulder at the one screen: Matt stroking the slope of his dog’s head. That motion, that urge to soothe and ground, it wasn’t far off from what Matt had done for Frank the night before, after they’d--“Y-yeah. Yeah, that’s why.”

“For what it’s worth, I really think Billy just wants to talk to Matt. Feel him out. He’ll push, probably. Make a few threats,” David added, “that Matt will easily parry, because he’s got that law degree to go with his doctorate in Ninjutsu.”

Eyebrow cocked, Frank repeated, “Doctorate in--”

David shrugged. “Admittedly not my best effort.” And spinning one hundred and eighty to monitor his screens, knocked over a paper cup that spat out a full tea bag, water colored a tepid brown. “Neither was--”

“Hey, hey,” Frank pointed at the speakers, “turn those up.”

“What? Wh--Oh.”

Gripping the table’s bezeled edged, Frank watched Matt slide out of the car behind Hugo. Face a man scarred almost beyond recognition.

“Mr. Murdock,” Billy fucking Russo said. “It’s a genuine pleasure.”

****

“Is it?” Matt asked, smiling, realizing he preferred the days-old cigar scent Fitz wore over his clothes to the overripe dumpster parked in a space to his left, the antifreeze tunneled through a network of cracks in the pavement at the threshold of the underground garage. “That sentiment isn’t often addressed to me by the opposing side.”

“Well, but aren’t we here to settle the matter amicably?”

Matt wound Hugo’s leash around his wrist, shortening its length, the dog’s hostile reach. “How we proceed is dependent entirely on you, Mr. Fridlund.”

Bill raised a hand that trailed cologne cut by that morning’s coffee, a fingerprint of blood, pledged, “I’ll be on my best behavior.” He gave Hugo a wide berth on the move towards an open door venting heat well out of proportion to the mild weather. Matt picked out three distinct brands of detergent, a mild bleach, and wondered if he was a special case, or if Billy chose the laundry room as the entry point for all of his guests. “If it’s acceptable to you, I’d take this inside.”

“Of course.” 

“Do you need--”

“That’s what the cane and dog are for. But thank you.”

“Fitz mentioned the dog,” Billy said, the narrow corridor amplifying his voice. The steady rounds of a confident heart beat. “He used the word big, and that, that just might be the grossest understatement I’ve heard in a while.”

“Do you share your brother’s dislike of--”

“No, I don’t.” Billy punched the elevator’s call button. “A healthy respect, now, that’s different. He’s been trained?”

“I’d say he hardly needed it.” Matt put his back to the cold metal of the elevator’s side wall, in part to keep the focus of David’s camera on its intended subject. And to keep as much distance as possible between Hugo and Billy’s definition of respect. “The same principle that rules certain people applies to him. The drive to guide, to protect, it’s bred into his nature.”

“And yours? All that pro bono work you do,” Billy said, “in the name of the little guy.”

The doors retracted. Billy’s expertly soled shoe met the marble floor of a wide, mostly empty foyer. 

Matt followed, waited as Billy put key to lock. “I enjoy the challenge.”

The wall adjacent to the door was a temptation Matt kept his hand away from, the cane’s handle crushed to his palm, curiosity biting deep into caution. Later, he would ask Frank about the frame. Custom-made, Matt would guess, and recently varnished. He’d ask for a description of the painting, willing to bet it was one from the warehouse. 

“Fitz turned up ten minutes ago. Probably drinking me dry of espresso as we speak,” Billy said. “Can I get you anything? Water for the dog?”

Matt deferred, widened the arc of the cane as he progressed into an open space. 

“Thanks for comin’, Mr. Murdock,” Fitz said, standing a few feet to Matt’s right. The Chapstick was out and again in constant motion, rolling from the tips of his fingers to the well of his palm. “Bill is--”

“Eager to get started. There’s a chair just here,” Billy walked ahead, “eleven steps.”

Sterile wasn’t the description Matt wanted, but it also wasn’t budging, buoyed by the disinfectant laid down like wax on Billy’s furniture. By the rubbing alcohol on a nearby table, next to a glass of melting ice. The lack of dust or ash in the fireplace, despite the hickory wood, despite the lucifer matches on the mantel. Turkish coffee, a trace of blood in the trash bin; those scents were undercurrents. Fading flowers in a well-appointed hospital waiting room. 

Billy perched on the edge of a large, solid desk. “I read a bit about you, Mr. Murdock. About Fisk. Frank Castle. You’ve got some big names under your belt, alongside all those average Joe’s.”

“Yes, well, my success rate with those big names is admittedly varied.”

“That’s right,” Billy said, obviously amused. “Castle gave you a run for the money he wasn’t paying you.”

“Your brother isn’t paying me either, yet I have every intention of giving my best on his--”

“You ever catch the news?”

Matt cocked his head. “On occasion.” 

“Not too long ago the only thing anybody gave a damn about was Castle’s resurrection. You hear about that minor miracle?”

“The word I heard was terrorist. Now, if we could--”

Billy stood. And in the way of Sunday mornings spent with his knees on a pew, Matt went still. His head straight instead of bowed, as Billy rounded the chair, and Fitz’s pulse fluctuated. In rising decibels, Hugo growled. 

“Mr--”

A fingernail scraped Matt’s neck, a hook in his collar, pulling it back.

“You got someone special in your life, Matty?” Billy asked, raking that nail up Matt’s skin, darkened by the diameter of Frank’s mouth. “You mind if I call you that?”

“I mind when my time is wasted. And I’m starting to think--”

“Let me have a guess.” Billy stepped away, at rest against the desk, arms crossed. “You’re thinking maybe I brought you here under false pretenses.”

The arch of Matt’s eyebrow overtook the rim of his glasses. “Did you?”

“In a manner of speaking, sure,” Billy said. “See, Fitz here isn’t the brother I’m concerned with.”

Matt tried, over the span of one even inhale, to imagine Frank on a cot beside Billy. What the threads of that friendship must have looked like. Tried to sketch a scenario around a private joke or shared memory, laughter passed between them like water, cool and calm. Even if he stretched the time with that thought to an hour, Matt doubted he’d manage to do much with it. The effort was made even more pointless by Billy’s expectation, cooly waiting on a response. Wearing conceit as easily and assuredly as fatigues.

“In the interest of moving this along, why don’t you tell me what it is, exactly, that you think I can do for you.”

“Straight to the point. I like that.” Billy shrugged, strands of his hair scraping over a starched collar. “I want Frankie.”

“It seems safe to assume you have the resources to find him. So why am I here?”

“You know how he is,” Billy said, the implication dropping his voice to a lower, intimate register. “How well he responds to certain...stimulus.”

Matt laughed. “Do you understand how ridiculous this is? I was his attorney, Mr--”

Billy shifted closer, suddenly, the move wrenching a tight growl from Hugo’s throat. Tail flicking, stirring cooler air, the dog strained against the shortened lead.

“Muzzle the dog, Matty, or I will.”

“It’s all right, Hugo.” Matt rubbed a thumb beneath one eye, lower to the corner of the dog’s mouth. Hugo’s lips were pulled back, the piercing point of each canine bared. “Billy isn’t going to hurt me. Or you.”

“You sound positive of that.” Billy crouched in front of Matt. “Mind tellin’ me why?”

His own smile curved to the point of broken glass, Matt said, “I’m only going to ask one more--”

Matt felt the pressure on his knee first, applied by the heel of Billy’s palm, before that hand slid up the inside length of Matt’s leg. Slow as Frank had gone, when he’d--Shutting out his instincts, Matt relaxed beneath the heavy weight of that touch. Blanked all but one thought: The cutting edge of the knife strapped to Billy’s forearm might have been dulled by layers of fine clothing, but the outline was unmistakable, and right where Frank had said it would be. 

In Frank’s hands, old habits became weapons. Billy Russo should know that better than anyone. Arrogance or underestimating Frank, whichever it was that--

Billy squeezed Matt’s thigh. “Still with me?”

Matt nodded, notched his chin up, to the side.

“Good. Now, I need a go-between, Matty, and since Frankie appears to enjoy spending time with you, I’ve drawn that straw on your behalf.”

Billy took off Matt’s glasses, set his breath to the lenses, his shoulder to the polish. Tested Matt’s sight in degrees by subtly adjusting the angle of his head. Seemingly satisfied, he continued to simply look. Matt heard it, then, the slight skitter of Billy’s pulse, how it quickened before Billy regrouped, put the glasses back in their place.

“Frankie and me, we’re long overdue for a face-to-face. I’ll tell you where, and when, all the rules. But there is one thing I gotta insist you put emphasis on, okay, so pay attention.” Billy leaned forward until his mouth aligned with Matt’s ear. A web of scars, thick and rigid, slanted across his cheek. “You tell Frankie, should his new friend with the horns show up, get in my way, I will _personally_ put him in the ground beside Maria and the kids. Repeat tha--”

“If your intention is to commit suicide,” Matt bit out, voice tighter than his hold on Hugo, as Billy slowly drew his hand back, and Matt thought, with Maria’s name between them, he would gladly stop Billy’s heart long enough to spare Frank the echo of it, “there are other, less painful options.”

That comment, Billy apparently chose to ignore, walking around the desk to pick up a container of petroleum jelly. Disturbing a scrap of cloth that smelled of the same. “Fitz,” he said, his attention divided between the kid and old leather, the careful shuffle of musty pages, “if you would show Matty the way back to the car.”

“Will do.”

Summarily dismissed, Matt rose and went without further urging or another word. In the elevator, he fixed on Hugo’s heart, the relief of that muscle’s receding rhythm, the beat no longer ricocheting to the outer edge of the dog’s chest cavity. Listened to the hydraulic whine of the car’s descent; to Fitz impatiently knocking, knocking, knocking on the emergency phone panel. He breathed in the still-bright sweetness of out of season clementines, filaments scraped from the fruit caught beneath Fitz’s nails. Tried to filter out the bitter smoke of two unique cigars, the butane in Fitz’s lighter.

It wasn’t enough: Matt’s thoughts circled Frank. Got tangled around him. What he’d seen and heard. How it must have--

The elevator doors parted and Matt moved quickly into the corridor. His cane tapped the floor and baseboards like a malfunctioning morse code receiver, the message spitting out too fast to be of reasonable use. Hugo easily paced him, grazing Matt’s leg with every step.

If Fitz read Matt’s haste as fear, fine. If he reported it to his boss and Billy was made more certain Matt was blind _and_ a fool, he wouldn’t be far off the fucking mark. Not after Matt, having tied his own hands, had just sat there while--And all for what, to keep the Devil in the dark a little longer? To open Billy’s trap for Frank a little goddamn wider?

Punching the exit door’s push bar, Matt didn’t respond when Fitz advised, “Keep your phone on, Mr. Murdock. It’ll go better for you if you don’t miss my next call.”

Matt climbed in the SUV and sat back. Shifted on the smooth leather seat, yanking on his tie, the knot. Inhaled and tried to hold the air there, in his lungs, his teeth clenched against the overriding artificial scent of the pine air freshen--

Insistent, Hugo nudged Matt’s elbow.

“Hu--”

The dog put his head beneath Matt’s arm and lifted it up, up until he could press in close, rest his warm weight against the side of Matt’s body. Licking what skin he could reach--Matt’s jaw, his cheek--one long swipe caught the curved rim of Matt’s glasses, slanting the frames across his nose.

Matt exhaled. Smiled, slightly, stroking the fur at Hugo’s throat. “Where were you when I was nine?”

“Ain’t nothing in the world like a dog,” the driver said. “Library?”

It wasn’t where Matt needed to be, but--“Yes.”

Several minutes in, Matt powered down the window. Hugo inched incrementally across his lap, nostrils expanding and contracting, until his head was tipped out and up. The dog’s body vibrated with scent discovery, and Matt had to remind himself, stop himself from checking the phone pocketed in his jacket. 

The driver changed lanes, slowed to a stop at the curb fencing the library. “Need anything?”

“All set.”

A kid with earbuds in, leaking Wagner, opened the door and stood back to let Matt inside. The reading room had been claimed by tutors speaking in equations their students heard as foreign languages, stammering the numbers back; by a little girl propped against a lower shelf, reading out loud, _Past the moon and his mama and papa sleeping tight_ ; by a pair of elderly men swapping marital war stories over an analog chess clock. 

Matt passed through, took a left into the hallway, and found the single stall family bathroom empty. The bolt flipped to occupied, Matt made room for Hugo to settle in front of the door, a panting barricade. 

An implacable heart rate answered Matt’s call. He couldn’t read it, or the nuances of Frank’s tactical stillness. On more than one Kitchen rooftop, Matt had felt that imposed calm like snow drifts too deep to move through, too thick to remove without risking burial. Whatever expression Frank wore, Matt thought David’s pulse had scattered because of it, that the hush of the other man’s breathing was deliberate. Regulated to go unnoticed.

“Frank.”

A slow, steady exhale. A few stilted seconds. “How long?”

“An hour,” Matt said. “Sooner, if the driver leaves.”

“I’ll be there.”

****

Backed against the hallway’s partition wall, Frank said nothing as Matt came through the door. Shut it and dropped the keys. Frank watched those long fingers that had buried in his hair, that had slipped across his lips, light as anything, light as air, loop Hugo’s leash around the scuffed silver knob. The braided rope swung, a pendulum scraping the wood grain. 

Matt leaned against the opposite wall. That mouth of his set. Silent.

His glasses were spotted white with the dog’s dried saliva. The black tie, the knot, was loose. Pulled off center. Matt’s collar, stretched out and creased on the left side, was a blue paler than the mark Frank had left on his skin. The skin Bill had--

Frank pushed into Matt’s arms, pressed against the length of him. Eyes closed, he breathed in and in, stripped the space of every scrap of oxygen that had Matt’s scent, and he did not let go.

The quiet held, too, and extended. Hugo came close, sat in their single shadow. 

“I’m sorry, Frank.”

Frowning, Frank pulled back a bit. Searched Matt’s face. “What the fuck are you sorry for?”

“When he said her name,” Matt’s hand on Frank’s hip fisted, “I should have--”

“Russo was threatening you,” Frank snarled. “He put his hands on _you_.”

Matt’s head tipped. His brow furrowed, a question Frank wanted to answer, but the outline was vague. “That was expec--”

“You went in there thinkin’ Bill was going to grope you?”

Caution pulled at Matt’s mouth, reset that firm line. His shoulders drew back, like he was prepared to bear the weight of--

”Whatever it is you’ve just decided not to tell me--”

“It’s not important.” Matt extracted himself--easily, gently--from Frank’s grasp. Moved down the hall, into the living room, where fingers of fading sunlight painted the furniture and floor. “Or relevant.”

“Hey.” Frank caught Matt’s hand. “I thought we were--”

“Hugo needs water.” Slick as the sheets on his bed, Matt slipped away. _Again_ , Frank thought. _What the fuck?_ “And I could use a drink. You?”

Frank slowly shook his head. “I’m good.”

He followed Matt to the kitchen, watched him put down a bowl of water Hugo went nowhere near, because that would mean leaving Matt’s side. Instead, the dog trailed him to the fridge, wedged in between Matt and the open door. 

“How’d you find him anyway?” Frank asked. “If he didn’t belong to the convent?”

“I didn’t.” Matt pitched the beer bottle’s cap into the trash. “He found me. I’m not certain he’s ever belonged to anyone.”

Understanding. Acceptance. Matt’s tone lacerated something in Frank. “He’s yours now.”

“Well,” Matt shrugged, his smile small, “for the time being, at least.”

“I, ah, told you Bill was as good as family, right?” Frank’s voice was distant to his own ears. But not so far, not anymore. “My kids, man, they loved him. Couldn’t get enough of these asinine stories he’d make up, and my girl, she loved to pick ‘em apart, you know, find all the inconsistencies. Rag on him. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it. And I shoulda--Because when she pushed, when Bill thought she was rubbing his face in it too much, maybe enjoying it, he’d tense up. Look away. Hindsight? He was getting himself under control.” 

Matt drifted closer, listening with the same patience and care he’d given Frank in that cemetery.

“I asked Billy, back when he had me strapped to a chair in David’s bunker, I asked if he had anything to do with them being killed. He told me no, said he wasn’t there. But he knew. He admitted to knowing it was going down and he did jack shit to stop it. That--To me, it was the same as pulling the fucking trigger,” Frank said. “I was on my way to bleeding out by then, but that had nothin’ to do with what was killing me, Matt. Nothing. I was gonna die without taking Bill with me, and that--”

“Frank,” Matt said, softly, because he was reading Frank’s pulse, or the memory of all that blood, and it wasn’t in him to leave it alone, to leave it there for Frank to carry on his own, “I should have--”

“We got a lock on Bill.” Maybe he did it to refocus one of Matt’s memories while it was fresh. Or because he needed the sea-drenched anchor of Matt’s eyes. The reason didn’t fucking matter. Frank got Matt’s glasses off, used his shirt to clear away the spots. “David did. Narrowed his location down to a floor.”

“That’s why I--”

“I know, and I watched him touch you. Listened to him call you Matty, like he had some fucking right to it, that name. I saw the way he looked at you. And I--” Frank swallowed. “I want Bill dead. More than I ever did. Want to break every goddamn bone in that hand first. But...”

Matt lifted his chin. “What?”

“I had his location. So. Get my ass over there, finish the piece of shit who sat back and did nothing while my wife, my kids, were killed,” Frank said, “or come here.”

Could’ve been Frank imagined it: the hitch in Matt’s next breath. What might’ve been realization, filling in the ragged pause. He had to’ve, because that question was back on Matt’s brow, multiplied by the lines on either side of his eyes. 

Frank tucked a knuckle beneath Matt’s chin, his thumb stroking the slick shine on familiar lips. “How are you not gettin’ this, Matty?” 

“It isn’t meant to be a riddle?”

“What I’m saying, sweetheart, in plain English, is there was no choice to be made. I didn’t think about it. Wouldn’t have made a fucking bit of difference if I had,” Frank admitted. “The answer was going to be you.”

A kit of pigeons lifted off the billboard. Startled by the oncoming light or electricity running the line. 

“Frank, I...”

“You, what?” Frank asked, when it was clear there were no more words on Matt’s tongue. “Don’t give a shit? Don’t want m--”

“You’re actually asking that?”

“What am I supposed to be asking?” Like he did that night in David’s basement, before he kissed Matt, before he knew for certain, Frank hooked Matt’s belt loop with a finger. Tugged him that much closer still. “I want what’s between us. And I’ll do what I have to, Matty. Whatever I have to to keep this, you hear me, but only if you--”

“And when you regret it?” Matt asked. “Then what?”

“For Christ’s--” Frank inhaled, sighed. His eyes on the bed they’d shared, the dog snoring night-long at their feet, he said, “A buddy of mine, right, he asked what it would take to make me happy. I told him happiness was a kick in the balls waiting to happen.”

Matt snorted.

“Next time I see Curt I’ve got a different answer for him,” Frank said. “Bottom line. Do you want to be with me, Matty? Really with me? Make some kinda life with the time we’ve got ahead of us, because I think I’m done punishing myself. And I am terrified of losin--”

“Frank,” Matt said, dipped in, pressed mouth to mouth. Lingered on the kiss, but not nearly long enough. “How are you not getting this?”

“Huh?” Frank said lamely, because Matt was smiling. Wide as the sun’s reach. “What?”

Starting towards the bedroom, Matt’s grip on Frank’s hand was light and easy, like maybe he knew, then, without a doubt, that where he went, Frank went, too. 

“You promised me next time. And the time after,” Matt said, “and I am going to collect, Frank.” He turned his head. Frank got hooked on the curled corner of his grin. “You realize this means you’re officially on morning walks duty with Hugo?”

“Yeah.” Frank smiled. “Sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, then. I owe all of you who stuck around and read this chapter by chapter, who kudos’d it and left brilliant comments, a thousand thanks. I continue to reread every kind word; I imagine I won't cease to do so any time soon.
> 
> On the off (off) chance of continued momentum: Is there interest in more fics, large or small, set in this same slice of their world? I have a few thoughts kicking around in the back of my mind, see.
> 
> (The line the little girl is reading out loud is from Sendak's _In The Night Kitchen_.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were content with how the last chapter closed, please do feel free to leave _this_ chapter unread, it's just that I noticed a theme in the comments, something about a confrontation...

Frank walked the defunct factory’s floor, glanced up at the ribbed vault ceiling, over to a reticulated window. Shards of moonlight sliced through a few broken panes, but where it was intact, where it wasn’t washed in grime, the glass was clear. Not a single one-dimensional saint in sight. Maybe a squatter had found religion in the building’s brick or mortar, in the wood planks stacked like stairs to an altar. But if God had ever been there He’d cleared out for the night. Made way for--

“That smile for me, Frankie?”

Billy stepped out of a shadowed recess beneath a wide arch. 

“I was just thinking,” Frank held his ground at five, six feet of separation, “of all the places you could’ve chosen to die, Bill, this one here is exactly right.”

“Some things never change, huh? You are still confident to a fault,” Billy said, with a smile that shifted his scars like water rippling. “But I’ll tell you what, I’ll bite.” His head canted to the light, and all the shit he still put in his hair, it glinted. “Why’s that?”

“Inmates worked this factory, back before there were regulations, zero safety standards.” Matt had told him that over a single cup of coffee, passed between them over tangled sheets, in the hour before night bowed to morning. Also said the place reeked of bird shit, piss, and unlit incense. And he was not wrong. Frank shrugged. “Must be some kind of consolation, knowing that when you go, you’ll be among your kind.”

A muscle ticked at Billy’s jaw. “I cut ties with the justice system at the hospital you put me in. Technically, no time served. Unlike you.”

“Yeah, okay, but lowlife shitbags living beneath someone else’s boot heel?” Frank said, “I don’t know, Bill. Think I hit that nail on the head.”

Billy’s narrowed gaze tracked to the left wall, fastened on a wide open electrical box spilling stripped wires. 

“I gotta say, Frankie, on occasion you do surprise me.” Billy settled into the long wool of his coat, both hands in a pocket. “I really thought, after Maria, you’d take up celibacy. But then, then I saw the lawyer’s throat. That mark. Figured it was your handiwork.” A deliberate step forward, then another. “I got a good look at Matty’s mouth, you know. I understand how it’d make a man wonder what it would feel like on his cock.” Bill dragged his dark stare back to Frank’s face, took his lip between his teeth. Smiled. “But I bet you’ve already had that pleasure, haven’t you, Frankie?”

A mockingbird nesting in a higher window went off like a car alarm. Frank could just make out the white patches on its wing, ruffled like it’d been caught in a wind, like it--

“You ever notice the similarities, Frank? Between your dead wife and current lover?” 

Ignoring the light shining there, on the picture of Maria and Matt hanging behind his every thought, Frank stonily met Bill’s eyes. “Besides the absolute fact of you standing no chance with either one of them?”

“That’s hardly a fair assessment,” Billy pointed out, “seeing as how I never tried with Maria. Not seriously, anyway. But Matty? I might have to--” 

Frank snorted. “You think you got an accurate read on him in, what, ten, fifteen minutes?” He shook his head. “Even for you that’s cute.”

The carpet of filmy feathers at his feet absorbed Billy’s attention for the full span of a minute. 

“Well,” he said, finally, “you haven’t gone for my throat yet, so he can’t--”

“You want my hand on your throat, Bill? That why we’re here? Because I can make that happen. I can--”

“Uh uh.” Bill’s right hand withdrew from his pocket, gripping a matte black Kimber. Same model as the one he’d lost to the hooves of the carousel’s horses. “You stay where you are. For now.”

Skimming a glance over Bill’s shoulder to the sledgehammer propped against a dented, rusting filing cabinet, Frank asked, “You think maybe we could hurry this up? I promised Matt--”

Billy clicked his tongue. “Making plans for a future you’re not gonna get, now, that’s just sad. How about this? I’ll keep them for you, make sure--”

A sibilant sound, softer than a whistle or whisper, preceded a dull thud. The clatter of metal hitting the ground, a hiss as the Kimber slid straight across the floor. Thin glass shattered, dropping the count of functioning light bulbs to three.

“What the _fuck_ , Fran--”

Matt’s boot caught Billy in the back. The push kick shoved Bill forward; momentum dropped him to his knees. 

Faster than any fighter Frank had ever seen, Matt had a fistful of Bill’s slicked back hair, used it to drive his head down to the ground. Kept that scarred cheek pinned to the splintering floorboards with his left hand, twisting Billy’s arm back--bending the elbow, the wrist, at an exquisite angle--with his right. 

Billy grunted, bucked and bucked in a vain attempt to dislodge Matt’s hold.

When breathing became an effort Bill grit his teeth to disguise, Frank crossed the scant feet between them, crouched on his haunches. Ducked his head, caught Billy’s eye. “How’s putting him in the ground working out for you, Bill?”

“Fuck y--”

Matt jerked hard on Billy’s hair. “Be nice.”

A slant of pale moonlight gleamed in Daredevil’s red eyes. Curled around the prominent peaks of the horns. But Frank, when he looked up at the sound of Matt’s voice, he focused on the mouth. On the razor-edged grin. The blood smeared just beneath the honed curve.

Swiping that bit of skin, finding nothing, no gash or scratch, Frank asked, “How many?”

“Not enough.” Matt nipped the tip of Frank’s lingering thumb. “Eight covering the perimeter. Fitz and one other on the door.”

Ten men down and Frank hadn’t heard a single sound. “Fridlund appreciate his lesson?”

Matt shrugged, but that grin impossibly sharpened. “He wasn’t in a position to say.”

Frank asked, “You leave Hugo to babysit?”

“Hugo?” As much as he could manage, Bill turned his head. Frank saw his questioning gaze latch onto Matt’s mouth, watched as he realized who it was beneath the mask. “You’re shitting me.”

The words reverberated from another life. From a dusty tent and talk of Tennyson, a sorry excuse for a football tossed over Frank’s head. His life hadn’t been ripped to shit then. Bill and him, they’d been friends. _Brothers_. And Frank hadn’t known a man could smile and shift the sun off its course, because he’d had no fucking idea Matt existed. And that--Frank shook his head. ”I shit you not.”

“That does explain how you were able to get with him, Frankie. He can’t see your--”

Matt wrenched Billy’s arm back. Forced him up to kneel. “If I could chime in with an answer to an earlier question, I do mind.”

The comment registered, lit a spark of amusement in Bill’s eyes. “Don’t tell me only he gets to call you M--”

Frank’s knuckles came away from the punch torn, bloodied. 

Spitting out his own saliva-thinned blood, Billy glared up at Frank, snarled, “Goddamn but it took you long enough to show up.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here now, Bill.” Frank stood, crossed over to the filing cabinet. The sledgehammer’s handle was as familiar to his palm as the butt of a gun, the cut curve of a grenade. “Get him on his feet, Red.”

“How many fucking nicknames you got for your wh--”

The blunt force behind Matt’s blow, the pain narrowly aimed at Bill’s liver, cut out his breath.

In the moments before Billy’s eyes shut tight, in the stretch between shock and recovery, Frank saw a flicker, saw how it burned Bill up to accept Matt’s grip as the reason he remained standing. To have to acknowledge that Matt allowed him that much dignity, at least. An act that owed nothing to Matt being a fellow Marine, honor-bound, and everything to do with him being a better man.

Looking at Matt, watching as he shifted to support Bill’s dragging weight, Frank made up his mind. He allowed Bill the time it took to reclaim his balance and breath, listened to the mockingbird’s unsettled song, the fluster of wings undecided on flight.

Eventually, Frank asked, “How’d you see this goin’ down, Bill?”

A faint laugh, then Billy said, “At the time, Frankie boy, I didn’t realize how deep your deal with the Devil ran.”

“Nah, Bill. You thought you could take him--”

“From you? Yeah.” Bill offered a negligent, one-shouldered shrug. “One way or another.”

“You were mistaken,” Matt said.

“And I’m not saying that’s never happened before, but--” 

The blade Bill kept up his sleeve slid from its sling. Frank heard it like a fucking snake in the grass, but then Matt swore, jerked back, and Frank didn’t think. The sledgehammer’s flat, unforgiving face caught Bill beneath the chin. Frank let out the fury clawing up his throat, pulled back, swung again. Cold metal cracked against bone--Bill’s clenched jaw--snapping his head to the side.

Blood splattered the floor at Frank’s feet. Bill went down and more spilled from his mouth, staining the wooden boards a rich, violent red.

Frank wasted an agonizing second on a glance at Billy. One hand flat on the ground, he showed no other sign of pushing up, striking back. Frank’s eyes shot over to--

Matt shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“Let me see,” Frank demanded. “Goddammit, let me--”

“I heard it, Frank.” Matt’s fingers fell from where they’d been inspecting his suit: the thin, superficial slice that cut across the outer layer of material over Matt’s abdomen. “There’s nothing to see.”

Before Frank could formulate a response that wasn’t a matter of skin on skin, Matt had moved to Bill’s side, shoved up his sleeve. Ripped the blade free and tossed it aside. “Get up.”

“Yes, sir,” Bill said, scraping himself off the ground. Sneering. “You know, I’m beginin’ to think you two were--”

Matt landed one hit after another. Face, face, ribs, right hook. Too quick for Bill to counter. Even after he got with the program, got his own fisted hands up in front of his blood-slick face, Frank saw that the best he could do was one wild shot. Knuckles glancing off Matt’s jaw.

Unfazed, Matt’s lips peeled back. And that hell-bent grin, it pierced Bill’s skin, made his mouth twist, tightened the tangle of scars across his face.

If it was Frank in Bill’s place, his next move would be dirty. It would be fast and brutal and ensure his opponent stayed down. In some ways their minds ran the same track: When Bill lowered his shoulder, surged at Matt, Frank wasn’t surprised.

Neither was Matt.

Bringing all of that lethal grace of his to bear, Matt deftly twisted away from the attack, seized Bill’s right arm in an unbreakable grip. Frank heard the distinct, sharp snap of a bone fracturing. Heard the resultant keening shout the injury ripped from Bill’s throat. 

The mockingbird picked it up, pitched it higher, to the ceiling, until it sounded like a fucking choir.

Matt turned his head towards Frank. The eyes set in his mask winked in the moonlight. “I left his hand for you.” 

Frank mirrored Matt’s grin. Hefted the hammer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you decided to read through, thank you for going another round with me. They make quite the team, don't they? [insert dopey, lovestruck smile here] I hope to be back with more in this world, and if I manage it, that you'll be on board.


End file.
